The Copernicus 2024 Report

10 June 2025 ISEADD

Copernicus program climate data management and sources

The Copernicus program is managed by the European Commission, in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. Its latest annual report states that 2024 will have broken all heat records, with global temperatures exceeding even the most pessimistic forecasts. The data comes from satellites, weather stations and computer models. Weather stations, often located near overheated urban areas (such as airports or parking lots), bias measurements and are therefore less reliable than satellites. However, in 2023, climatologist John Christy revealed that satellite data, less influenced by urbanization, showed less pronounced warming than official figures.

Global warming in historical perspective

Of course, it's not a question of denying global warming, but of putting it into perspective within climatic cycles, which are often forgotten by those more interested in current events than in history. The Earth has known much warmer - and also colder - periods without human intervention. The Middle Ages saw a "climatic optimum", with vineyards in England and Viking settlements in Greenland, which became known as the " Green Country " precisely because it wasn't as white and cold as it was in later centuries. For the record, a maximum temperature of 41° was recorded in Poitiers in 1870, while no day in 2024 exceeded 37°. More recently, the 1930s saw comparable heat waves, long before SUVs and Chinese factories. These cycles, linked to solar activity, ocean currents and volcanic eruptions, show that the climate is changing anyway, with or without us.

The economic and political challenges of the energy transition

So, with that in mind, is 2024 really exceptional, or is it a natural peak in a wider cycle? Raw data, when unfiltered, raises questions. In a way, we're approaching the conditions of observation in quantum physics, where the observer modifies the thing observed. But there's a big difference: it's the difference between an observer's position and an observer's attitude, because this phenomenon of transformation is inevitable in quantum physics - without it yet being possible to understand the principle - whereas the reality of current warming is becoming a theme, less sensitive to study than to the development of particular economic sectors.

The "energy transition" is opening up a market for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, lithium... Multinationals like Siemens are raking in billions, all the more easily boosted by public subsidies. But what deserves most attention is the impact of this policy on sub-Saharan Africa, where many of our students come from, and where the demand for "carbon neutrality" prevents electrification projects from coming to fruition, keeping a growing population in a state of energy under-consumption.

We know that the curve of wealth coincides with that of energy consumption: with a "Dark Continent " which, in twenty-five years' time, in 2050, will account for a quarter of the world's population, with 2.5 billion inhabitants, it is likely that a new approach will be required of the European Commission and other bodies responsible for inspiring policies in this area.

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