2024 Will Be the Hottest Year on Record, Scientists Say

Summary

2024 is pro­jected to be the hottest year on record, with global tem­per­a­tures likely to exceed 1.5 ºC above pre-indus­trial lev­els, prompt­ing con­cerns about the impacts of cli­mate change on ecosys­tems. The COP29 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan is ongo­ing, with the lat­est data from the Copernicus Observatory high­light­ing the urgent need for increased ambi­tions in address­ing cli­mate change.

Surface air tem­per­a­tures on Earth con­tinue to rise steadily, with data from the European Union’s Copernicus Observatory indi­cat­ing that 2024 is set to become the hottest year on record.

Moreover, 2024 may be the first year global tem­per­a­tures exceed 1.5 ºC above the aver­age sur­face tem­per­a­tures esti­mated before the Industrial Revolution.

Specifically, researchers found that the aver­age global tem­per­a­ture anom­aly in the first ten months of 2024 was 0.71 ºC higher than the 1991 to 2020 aver­age and 0.16 ºC warmer than in 2023.

The 1991 to 2020 aver­age is the lat­est ​“cli­mate nor­mal” defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO uses this 30-year period to estab­lish ref­er­ence val­ues for tem­per­a­tures and other vari­ables.

October 2024 saw air sur­face tem­per­a­tures rise 1.65 ºC above pre-indus­trial lev­els, exceed­ing the 1.5 ºC thresh­old in 15 of the last 16 months.

“It is now vir­tu­ally cer­tain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” researchers wrote in the lat­est Copernicus bul­letin.

“For 2024 not to set a new record, the aver­age tem­per­a­ture anom­aly for the remain­der of the year would need to drop to nearly zero,” they added.

Researchers now project that 2024 will set a new global sur­face air tem­per­a­ture aver­age of 1.55 ºC above pre-indus­trial lev­els.

Europe expe­ri­enced above-aver­age tem­per­a­tures through­out the entire year.

In October 2024, the aver­age land tem­per­a­ture across Europe was 10.83 ºC, which is 1.23 ºC above the 1991 to 2020 aver­age. However, October 2022 remains the warmest October on record, with tem­per­a­tures of 1.92 ºC higher than the base­line.

A 1.5 ºC increase above pre-indus­trial lev­els is con­sid­ered a crit­i­cal thresh­old. In 2015, dozens of coun­tries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate to keep tem­per­a­ture increases below 2 ºC, with a more ambi­tious tar­get of stay­ing below 1.5 ºC.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tific body under the United Nations, has iden­ti­fied these tem­per­a­ture thresh­olds as tip­ping points for sig­nif­i­cant changes in Earth’s ecosys­tems.

According to Copernicus, ocean tem­per­a­tures are also ris­ing. Apart from spe­cific areas of the south­ern Pacific and small regions in the north­ern Pacific and north­ern Atlantic, sea tem­per­a­tures in 2024 remain well above the lev­els recorded from 1991 to 2020.

During the sum­mer of 2024, the Mediterranean Sea reached a record sea sur­face tem­per­a­ture of 28.56 ºC.

These high sea tem­per­a­tures are inter­con­nected with land tem­per­a­tures, pre­cip­i­ta­tion and weather pat­terns across the Mediterranean region, home to more than 95 per­cent of global olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Samantha Burgess, the deputy direc­tor of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, stated that the lat­est data ​“mark a new mile­stone in global tem­per­a­ture records and should serve as a cat­a­lyst to raise ambi­tions for the upcom­ing Climate Change Conference, COP29.”

COP29, the lat­est United Nations Climate Change Conference, is cur­rently tak­ing place in Baku, Azerbaijan – an olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try and one of the sig­na­to­ries of the Paris Agreement. The con­fer­ence will con­tinue until November 22^nd.

• Copernicus