The Earth is heating up at an increasing rate, and has seen global record highs for every month of the past year, according to two major new reports on climate change.
May was the 12th consecutive month in which the global average temperature reached a record value for the respective month, the EU's climate change service Copernicus announced on Wednesday.
Another report the same day revealed that man-made global warming has recently increased faster than at any time since records based on readings from scientific instruments began in the 19th century.
In the past decade alone (2014 to 2023), the temperature rose by around 0.26 degrees due to human activities, according to the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) report. The findings were published by the group from the University of Leeds in the journal Earth System Science Data.
A decade earlier (2004 to 2013), there was around 0.20 degrees of warming, according to the university.
The record values take into account warming effects of natural climate phenomenon such as El Niño, which has recently played a greater role.
The IGCC report states that the increase is due to high greenhouse gas emissions on the one hand, while the amount of cooling aerosols in the atmosphere has decreased on the other. For example, the content of sulphate aerosols had fallen sharply as a result of a new regulation for cleaner marine fuels.
Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said that while the sequence of record-breaking months will be interrupted at some point, "the general signature of climate change will remain and there is no change to this trend in sight."
According to the Copernicus data, May was 1.52 degrees warmer than the period from 1850 to 1900, the pre-industrial reference period.
The average global temperature over the past 12 months - from June 2023 to May 2024 - also reached an all-time high, 1.63 degrees above the pre-industrial level.
The IGCC estimates that humans can produce another 200 billion tons of CO2 before global warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius on a permanent basis. This is roughly equivalent to five years of current emissions.
There is a small ray of hope, however. The team from Leeds University found that the increase in CO2 emissions has slowed in the past decade compared to the 2000s. Depending on societal decisions, the current decade could bring a reversal of some values.