Dr Andrew King, senior lecturer in climate science at the University of Melbourne, who was not part of either study, says the research highlights how "single months and years over the 1.5C mark are likely to be features of a longer period the world has entered in which the climate averages more than 1.5C of global warming”.
But Dr Tom Mortlock, head of climate analytics Asia-Pacific at Aon and Adjunct Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, adds: "2024 was the warmest year on record globally, with average temperatures exceeding 1.5C.
The Earth may have already entered an era of intensified global heating that the Paris Agreement was aimed to avert, two new studies examining the record breaking temperatures of 2024 have found.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests the unprecedented heat last year could mark the beginning of a multi-decade period where the average global temperature consistently exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The second study, led by researchers from Canada, says June 2024 marked the 12th consecutive month with global mean surface temperatures at least 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
