The Earth recorded its hottest year never in 2024, with a jump so big that the planet has temporarily reached a major milestone climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.
Last year’s global average temperature easily surpassed the 2023 heat record and continued to rise further. It has exceeded the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, required by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus climate service. the UK Meteorological Bureau and the Japan Meteorological Agency. .
The European team calculated a warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit). Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British found 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in coordinated data releases early Friday morning European time.
US monitoring teams – NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private company Berkeley Earth – were due to release their figures later on Friday, but all will likely show record heat for 2024, European scientists said. The six groups make up for data gaps in observations going back to 1850 – in different ways, which is why the numbers vary slightly.
“The main reason for these record temperatures is the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from the burning of coal, oil and gas, said Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ climate policy lead. “As greenhouse gases continue to build up in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to rise, including in the oceans, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice caps continue to melt . »
Last year, the 2023 temperature in the European database eclipsed by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). This is an unusually large jump; Until recent very hot years, global temperature records were exceeded by only a few hundredths of a degree, scientists said.
The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record and probably the warmest in 125,000 years, Burgess said.
July 10 was the hottest day recorded by humans, with an average global temperature of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus discovered.
The burning of fossil fuels is by far the main cause of record warming, several scientists said. A temporary natural warming due to El Nino in the central Pacific added a small amount and an underwater volcanic eruption in 2022 ended up cooling the atmosphere because it put more reflective particles into the atmosphere as well as vapor from “water,” Burgess said.
“It’s a warning light going off on Earth’s dashboard that immediate attention is needed,” said Marshall Shepherd, a professor of meteorology at the University of Georgia. “Hurricane Helene, flooding in Spain, and the weather whiplash fueling California wildfires are symptoms of this unfortunate climate gear shift. We still have a few gears to go.
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“Climate change alarm bells are ringing almost constantly, which could make the public desensitized to the emergency, like police sirens in New York,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “In the case of climate, however, the alarms are growing louder and the emergencies now go well beyond simple temperature. »
There have been 27 weather disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damage, one short of the record set in 2023, according to NOAA. The American cost of these disasters was $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helene was the costliest and deadliest hurricane of the year, with at least 219 deaths and $79.6 billion in damage.
“In the 1980s, Americans experienced more than a billion weather and climate disasters on average every four months,” Texas Tech climatologist Katharine Hayhoe said in an email about the weather-adjusted numbers. NOAA inflation. “Now there’s one every three weeks – and we already have the first of 2025 even though we’re only 9 days into the year.”
“Accelerating global temperature increases are leading to more property damage and impacts on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said Kathy Jacobs, a water expert at the University of Arizona. .
The world crosses a major threshold
This is the first time a year has exceeded the 1.5 degree threshold, with the exception of a 2023 measurement by Berkeley Earth, originally funded by philanthropists skeptical of global warming.
Scientists were quick to point out that the 1.5 target corresponds to long-term warming, now defined as a 20-year average. Long-term warming since pre-industrial times is now 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The 1.5 degree C threshold is not just a number, it is a warning signal. Exceeding it for even a single year shows how dangerously close we are to exceeding the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” Victor Gensini, a climate scientist at Northern Illinois University, said in an email. A massive 2018 United Nations study found that keeping Earth’s temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius could prevent the extinction of coral reefs, prevent mass loss of the Earth’s ice cap Antarctica and avoid the death and suffering of many people.
Francis called the threshold “death in the water.”
Burgess called it highly likely that Earth would exceed the 1.5 degree threshold, but called the Paris Agreement “an extremely important international policy” that nations around the world should remain committed to.
European and British calculations estimate that with a cooling La Niña instead of last year’s warming El Nino, 2025 is unlikely to be as warm as 2024. They predict it will be the third warmest. However, the first six days of January – despite freezing temperatures in the eastern United States – were slightly warmer on average and constitute the warmest start to the year yet, according to Copernicus data.
Scientists remain divided on whether global warming is accelerating.
There is not enough data to see an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but the heat content of the oceans appears not only to be increasing, but to be increasing at a faster rate, said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.
“We are facing a whole new climate and new challenges – climate challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Buontempo said.
It’s like watching the end of a “dystopian science fiction movie,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “We are now reaping what we have sown.”
