PARIS: Global temperatures were stuck at near-record highs in April, the EU’s climate monitor said on Thursday, extending an unprecedented heat streak and raising questions about how quickly the world might be warming.
The extraordinary heat spell was expected to subside as warmer El Niño conditions faded last year, but temperatures have stubbornly remained at record or near-record levels well into this year.
“And then comes 2025, when we should be settling back, and instead we are remaining at this accelerated step-change in warming,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“And we seem to be stuck there. What this is caused (by) — what is explaining it — is not entirely resolved, but it’s a very worrying sign,” he told AFP.
In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.

All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely.

Many scientists believe this target is no longer attainable and will be crossed in a matter of years.
A large study by dozens of pre-eminent climate scientists, which has not yet been peer reviewed, recently concluded that global warming reached 1.36C in 2024.
Copernicus puts the current figure at 1.39C and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid 2029 or sooner based on the warming trend over the last 30 years.
“Now it’s in four years’ time. The reality is we will exceed 1.5 degrees,” said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs Copernicus.
“The critical thing is to then not latch onto two degrees, but to focus on 1.51,” the climate scientist told AFP.
Julien Cattiaux, a climate scientist at the French research institute CNRS, said 1.5C “would be beaten before 2030” but that was not a reason to give up.
“It’s true that the figures we’re giving are alarming: the current rate of warming is high. They say every 10th of a degree counts, but right now, they’re passing quickly,” he told AFP.
“Despite everything, we mustn’t let that hinder action.”

Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense.
But they are less certain about what else might have contributed to this persistent heat event.
Experts think changes in global cloud patterns, airborne pollution and Earth’s ability to store carbon in natural sinks like forests and oceans, could be factors also contributing to the planet overheating.
The surge pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record, with 2025 tipped to be third.

“The last two years... have been exceptional,” said Burgess.
“They’re still within the boundary — or the envelope — of what climate models predicted we could be in right now. But we’re at the upper end of that envelope.”
She said that “the current rate of warming has accelerated but whether that’s true over the long term, I’m not comfortable saying that,” adding that more data was needed.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further into the past.
Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.
 

SANTIAGO: Chinese automaker BYD and metals group Tsingshan are backing out of multi-million dollar plans to build lithium cathode plants in Chile, the country’s economic development agency said on Wednesday.
The retreat by the two huge Chinese companies is a blow to Chile’s aim to develop more domestic processing of lithium, a key metal for electric vehicle batteries. Chile is the world’s no. 2 lithium producer.
Both projects were hit by plunging lithium prices, said government economic development agency Corfo, which in 2023 had tapped BYD and Tsingshan for a preferential lithium price deal as part of its efforts to spur investment in Chile.
“The companies selected by Corfo have been affected in their investment decisions by the global market conditions, which have shown a sharp drop in prices,” Corfo said in a statement.
Tsingshan told Reuters it has withdrawn plans for a $233 million project to produce 120,000 metric tons of lithium iron phosphate (LFP). Chile’s national assets ministry told Reuters that BYD filed an intent to withdraw its plans in January.
BYD, the world’s biggest maker of electric cars, declined to comment. BYD last year flagged delays to a planned $290 million plant, which was expected to produce 50,000 metric tons per year of LFP for cathodes.
Chilean newspaper Diario Financiero first reported the scrapped investments.
Chile’s effort in 2018 to encourage lithium-related investments via a pricing deal also fell apart. Chilean chemical company Molymet, China’s Sichuan Fulin Transportation Group Co. , and a joint venture between Korean firms Posco and Samsung for various reasons withdrew their plans.
Tsingshan and BYD would have had access to preferential prices of lithium produced by Chilean miner SQM through 2030, a timeframe that Corfo said also may have influenced the withdrawal of the projects.
In addition, Corfo said Tsingshan had wanted to assign the project development to a unit of the company that had not participated in the bidding process, which Corfo said was not possible.
Corfo last week opened a second bidding process for a similar scheme, this time to provide a purchasing deal with US lithium producer Albemarle through 2043 for companies that commit to lithium-related projects.
Albemarle and the selected investors will be able to use an “alternative form” to determine a price agreement, Corfo said.