Earth saw its hottest year in 2024, breached major climate threshold

Earth recorded his hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.

Last year’s global average temperature easily surpassed the record heat of 2023 and continued to push even higher. It has exceeded the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, which was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Service Commission, the United Kingdom’s Meteorology Office and the Japan Weather Bureau. .

The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and Britain 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in data releases coordinated with early Friday morning European time.

US monitoring teams – NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth – were due to release their figures later on Friday, but all are likely to show record heat by 2024, European scientists said. The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations going back to 1850 – in different ways, which is why numbers vary slightly.

“The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from burning coal, oil and gas, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate leader at Copernicus. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to rise, including in the ocean, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”

Last year, the 2023 temperature in the European database was off by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). That is an unusually large leap; until the last few super-hot years, global temperature records were only surpassed by hundredths of a degree, scientists said.

The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record and are likely the warmest in 125,000 years, Burgess said.

July 10 was the hottest day recorded by humans, with the globe averaging 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus found.

By far the biggest contributor to record warming is the burning of fossil fuels, several scientists said. A temporary natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean added a small amount and an undersea volcanic eruption in 2022 could cool the atmosphere because it put more reflective particles into the atmosphere and water vapor, Burgess said.

“This is a warning light going out on Earth’s dashboard that needs immediate attention,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd. “Hurricane Helene, floods in Spain and the whiplash fueling wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate climate change. We still have a few gears to go.”

“Climate change-related alarm bells have been ringing almost constantly, which can cause the public to become desensitized to the urgency, like police sirens in New York City,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis. “However, in the case of climate, the alarms are getting louder, and the emergencies are now far beyond just temperature.”

There were 27 weather disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damage, just one short of the record in 2023, according to NOAA. The US cost of those disasters was $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helene was the costliest and deadliest of the year with at least 219 deaths and $79.6 billion in damage.

“In the 1980s, Americans experienced an average of one billion-plus weather and climate disasters every four months,” Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said in an email about NOAA’s inflation-adjusted numbers. “Now there is one every three weeks – and we already have the first one from 2025, even though we ​​​​​​are only 9 days a year.”

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“The acceleration of global temperature increases means more property damage and impact on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said University of Arizona water scientist Kathy Jacobs.

This is the first time that any year has passed the 1.5-degree threshold, except for a 2023 measurement by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists skeptical of global warming.

Scientists were quick to point out that the 1.5 target is for long-term warming, now defined as a 20-year average. Warming since pre-industrial times over the long term is now at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The threshold of 1.5 degrees C is not just a number – it is a red flag. Exceeding it even for one year shows how dangerously close we are to breaking the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini said in an email. A massive 2018 United Nations study found that keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius could save coral reefs from extinction, keep massive ice sheet loss in Antarctica at bay and the death and suffering of many people avoid.

Francis called the threshold “dead in the water.”

Burgess called it extremely likely that the Earth will exceed the 1.5 degree threshold, but called the Paris Agreement “extremely important international policy” that nations around the world must remain committed to.

European and British calculations figure with a cooling La Nina instead of last year’s warming El Nino, 2025 is likely to be not quite as warm as 2024. They predict that it will turn out to be the third-warmest. However, the first six days of January – despite frigid temperatures in the American East – average slightly warmer and are the warmest beginning of a year yet, according to Copernicus data.

Scientists remain divided on whether global warming is accelerating.

There is not enough data to show an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but the heat content of the oceans seems not only to increase, but to go at a faster rate, said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges – climate challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Buontempo said.

This is all like watching the end of “a dystopian sci-fi movie,” said climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania. “We are now reaping what we have sown.”