September 2023, highest anomaly on record?

At the 2015 Paris Agreement, politicians pledged to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

At the time, many politicians thought that the temperature rise could be held below 1.5°C above pre-industrial by taking action to reach a peak in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.

To date, politicians keep claiming that aiming for net-zero emissions, can and will avoid dangerous climate change.

• Rise from pre-industrial - First of all, politicians assume that 1.5°C above pre-industrial hasn't been crossed yet, whereas we may already have crossed 2°C above pre-industrial, as discussed in this analysis.
• Policy choices - politicians keep pushing policies that fail to reduce biofuels and that continue burning of fuel even beyond 2050 (combined with BECCS), while failing to highlight the importance of methods such as biochar, policies such as local feebates and technologies such as heat pumps and eVTOL air taxis.
• Emissions - Politicians claim their policies will reduce emissions and accomplish net-zero emissions soon, but energy-related greenhouse gas emissions have started to grow again, following minor Covid lockdown-related reductions in 2020, as illustrated by the image below, from an earlier post.

[ Global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions 2000-2022, adapted from EIA ]

• Sinks - The future of sinks, which have long been crucially removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, is in doubt. Forests are burning away. In 2023, nearly 2bn tons of carbon is estimated to have already gone up into the atmosphered in Canada up to now due to forest wildfires, far exceeding annual emissions tied to Canada’s economy (i.e. a total of 670m tons). A 2020 study shows that the mean temperature of the warmest quarter (3-month period) passed the thermal maximum for photosynthesis during the past decade. At higher temperatures, respiration rates continue to rise in contrast to sharply declining rates of photosynthesis. Under business-as-usual emissions, this divergence elicits a near halving of the land sink strength by as early as 2040. Furthermore, higher temperatures result in a decrease of the terrestrial carbon sink, due to increased fires, droughts, storms, flooding and erosion, while the ocean will struggle as a carbon sink, in part because warmer waters become more stratified and can store less CO₂, while increased river runoff and meltwater also lowers alkalinity levels. There is also a danger that hydroxyl, the main way that methane gets broken down in the atmosphere, is declining or is getting overwhelmed by the rise in methane, as described here. 
• Albedo - Loss of sea ice and warming oceans causing fewer bright clouds combine to reflect less sunlight back into space, as discussed here and here. 
  
• Tipping points - Important also is the rate of change. Greenhouse gas levels and temperatures are rising faster than they ever did in Earth's history. We're in uncharted territory! The danger is growing that feedbacks will kick in with accelerating ferocity as tipping points get crossed, with catastrophic consequences. 

[ from: When will humans go extinct? ]