Unfortunately that doesn’t add any useful data.
The important thing at this point is to understand whether or not the machine is actually overheating. As @JohnAtl has said, iStat Menus can give us that information. Let us know what you find out.
I will run a few tests over the week-end, thanks!
I’m running a few apps now and the fan went crazy. I’m attaching a temperature screenshot (Celsius). Please let me know if there’s anything else I should take a pic of.
It certainly looks like the CPU is the source of the problem. The first thing that comes to my mind is that the thermal paste re-do may have failed. Did you do that yourself?
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Is this if any help (pic taken at the same time as the temperature one yesterday, same apps running)
No, I had it done professionally (hopefully). But I had this problem before, which is why I had the thermal paste changed (they said it was really dry - I’ve been using it nearly every day for 8 years), so I don’t think it made it worse, I think it just made no difference.
This is a long shot, but what happens if you shut down Zoom?
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I think the main culprit in this configuration would be gone, but I can’t really do it, since if I’m on Zoom I kind of need to be there… could test it with a friend though.
However, I’ve had this problem pre-COVID (and therefore pre-Zoom & co.), but I always had Safari open with around 30 windows, Word with 10-15, Excel another 5-10, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Things, all of that distributed in 5-6 “screens” (desktops? I can’t recall their official name). Shall I just suppose that’s too much for such a machine? Then again the 2015 doesn’t have that problem, but I imagine it being 3 years newer and physically bigger could make all the difference. I still suspect Apple didn’t think it through when they allowed 2Ghz CPUs into an 11” Air.
I might just pick up a second hand 11” from 2015 and see what happens. I still haven’t warmed up the USB-C and have a couple of 27” Thunderbolt screens which I would like to keep using as long as they work. Yes, I like old stuff! 
Honestly, I think that you’re running into the thermal constraints of the 11" Air. It’s tiny and software like Zoom places a lot of demand on (especially older) CPUs, which means a lot of heat, and for that little case a lot of fan noise.
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Zoom (or any video conferencing software) is not gentle in the cpu (using zoom or teams speeds up my 2016 MBP’s fans like crazy) but that seems quite a load for a 2012 MBA… 
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I respect your position, but in my experience old CPU’s are a lot like old men: they don’t get hotter, they get slower.
That being said, I’m out of answers, so perhaps @fytduthrgdc should think about exploring other options.
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I think I’m perhaps convinced now that my beloved 2012 has finally gotten old. I’ll report back if I get myself something newer.
Data gets disorganised, pathlength gets longer. So systems get outclassed by the workload.
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So, I now have a second-hand 2015 11" i7 2,2 GHz Macbook Air., which I hereby nominate the successor of the 2012 11".
I cloned the 13" SSD onto it (I wrote about it in my other post), first it was quiet, then the fan started spinning (although not as loud as the 2012).
The processes eating up a lot of CPU were mds and mds_stores. I remember that was the case with the 2012 too (before the whole Zoom and screen recording business). As you may know they are responsible for Spotlight indexing. I have deactivated it from Terminal (found the sudo command in a forum), the fan went still, activated it again and still no noise. Fingers crossed. If my issue is solved I intend to get another 3-5 years out of this little gem! 
Thanks everyone for your patience and your suggestions!
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