Global leaders gather at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan to discuss climate and efforts to curb emissions. Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/ZUMA Press Wire

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5 Celsius is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded— even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

Although a single year above 1.5 Celsius does not itself spell climate doom or break the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which countries agreed to strive to keep the long-term temperature rise below this point, scientists have warned this aspiration has in effect been snuffed out despite the exhortations of leaders currently gathered at a United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan.

“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5 Celsius is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5 Celsius line an........

© Mother Jones