Earth recorded it. Hottest year Sometime in 2024, with a jump so big that the planet temporarily went through a major. Climate limit, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.
Last year's global average temperature easily surpassed 2023's record warmth and continues to push even higher. It 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 Agreement, the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Service, the UK Meteorological Department. According to the office and the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The European team calculated a warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit). Data released early Friday morning European time saw Japan at 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and Britain at 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit).
The US monitoring teams — NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth — were due to release their data late Friday but all will likely show record warmth for 2024, European scientists said. The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations going back to 1850—in different ways, which is why the numbers vary slightly.
“The main cause of these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and gas,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at Copernicus. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to rise, including in the oceans, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”
Last year, the European database eclipsed the 2023 temperature by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). This is an unusually large leap; Until the last two extremely warm years, global temperature records were only exceeded by one-hundredth of a degree, scientists said.
The past 10 years are the 10 warmest on record and possibly the warmest in 125,000 years, Burgess said.
July 10 was the hottest day ever recorded by humans, with an average global temperature of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus found.
Many scientists said that the biggest contributor to record warming by far is the burning of fossil fuels. Burgess said a temporary natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean added a small amount, and the 2022 undersea volcanic eruption cooled the atmosphere as it pumped more reflective particles into the atmosphere as well as water vapor. Burgess said.
“This is a warning light on Earth's dashboard that needs immediate attention,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd. “Hurricane Helene, floods in Spain and weather fueling wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate climate change. We still have some gears left.”
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“The alarm bells about climate change are ringing almost constantly, which can lead to immediate public despondency, like police sirens in New York City,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodville Climate Research Center. ” “In terms of climate, though, the alarms are getting louder, and emergencies now go far beyond temperature.”
According to NOAA, there were 27 weather disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in losses, just one short of the 2023 record. The U.S. cost of these disasters was $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helene was the costliest and deadliest of the year, causing at least 219 deaths and $79.6 billion in damage.
“In the 1980s, Americans experienced an average of more than a billion weather and climate disasters every four months,” Texas Tech climate scientist Kathryn Hayhoe said in a statement about NOAA's inflation-adjusted data. said in the email. “Now, there's one every three weeks — and we already have the first one in 2025 even though we only have 9 days in the year.”
“Increasing global temperatures mean more property damage and impacts on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said Kathy Jacobs, a water scientist at the University of Arizona.
The world violates great limits.
This is the first time any year has exceeded the 1.5 degree threshold, except for the 2023 measure by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists who skeptics of global warming.
Scientists are quick to point out that the 1.5 target is for long-term warming, now defined as the 20-year average. Warming over the long pre-industrial period is now 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The 1.5°C limit isn't just a number – it's a red flag. Missing it by even a year shows how dangerously close we are to breaching the limits set by the Paris Agreement. ,'' Victor Gansini, a climate scientist at Northern Illinois University, said in an email. Reefs could be saved from extinction, massive loss of ice in Antarctica could be prevented, and the death and suffering of many people could be prevented.
Francis called the threshold “dead in the water.”
Burgess called it highly unlikely that the Earth would exceed the 1.5 degree limit, but called the Paris Agreement “an extraordinarily important international policy” that nations around the world must commit to.
With a cooler La Nina instead of last year's warm El Niño, 2025 is unlikely to be as hot as 2024, according to figures from European and British calculations. However, the first six days of January — despite colder temperatures in the US East — averaged slightly warmer and were the warmest start to the year yet, according to Copernicus data.
Scientists are divided on whether global warming is accelerating.
Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said there is not enough data to see an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but it appears that the heat content of the oceans is not only increasing, but increasing rapidly.
“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges — climate challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Buontempo said.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was all like watching the end of “a dystopian sci-fi movie.” “Now we are reaping what we have sown.”