In September, the world passed 1.5°C of warming. Two months later, we hit 2°C of warming. It’s fair to wonder what is going on.
What we’re seeing is not runaway climate change. These are daily spikes, not the long-term pattern we would need to say the world is now 2 degrees hotter than it was in the pre-industrial period.
These first breaches of temperature limits are the loudest alarms yet. They come as the United Nations Environment Program warns the world is still on a path to a “hellish” 3°C of warming by the end of the century.