Europe's Climate Change Accelerates, 2024 Warmest Year on Record

Summary

The lat­est report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that Europe’s sur­face tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing faster than the global aver­age, with 2024 being Europe’s warmest year on record and expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous impacts from extreme weather and cli­mate change. The report also high­lights wide­spread heat stress, record-break­ing tem­per­a­tures, decreas­ing cold con­di­tions, and increas­ing extreme weather events across Europe, empha­siz­ing the urgent need for adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies to pre­vent fur­ther warm­ing and build greater resilience.

Anomalies in pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns and tem­per­a­tures across Europe appear to be accel­er­at­ing.

The lat­est report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) also shows that Europe’s sur­face tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing faster than the global aver­age.

Copernicus is the Earth obser­va­tion com­po­nent of the European Union’s space pro­gram.

In its paper, com­piled in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), researchers reported that 2024 was Europe’s warmest year on record.

“This report high­lights that Europe is the fastest-warm­ing con­ti­nent and is expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous impacts from extreme weather and cli­mate change,” added WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

Annual sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea reached their high­est level ever recorded: 21.5 °C, 1.2 °C above aver­age. European lakes also reached unprece­dented tem­per­a­tures.

The European State of the Climate 2024 report fur­ther high­lighted wide­spread global heat stress.

Sixty per­cent of Europe expe­ri­enced more days than aver­age with at least intense heat stress, defined by per­ceived tem­per­a­tures exceed­ing 32 °C.

Moreover, annual tem­per­a­tures reached record highs across nearly half of Europe.

Eastern and south­east­ern Europe expe­ri­enced anom­alous heat, with the lat­ter region endur­ing the longest recorded heat­wave.

Heat stress sig­nif­i­cantly affected key olive oil-pro­duc­ing areas in the Mediterranean, includ­ing Greece, Turkey and parts of Spain and Italy.

Italy, Croatia, Greece and west­ern Turkey reported a record num­ber of trop­i­cal nights, reach­ing 23. Tropical nights occur when min­i­mum tem­per­a­tures do not fall below 20 °C.

While less fre­quent than in recent years, parts of south­ern Spain and Southern Portugal faced extreme heat stress days, with peak tem­per­a­tures exceed­ing 46 °C.

In mid-August, sea tem­per­a­tures peaked at 28.7 °C, par­tic­u­larly in the Adriatic, Ligurian and Gulf of Lion, bor­der­ing north­east­ern Spain and the South of France. 

This was clas­si­fied as a severe marine heat­wave, coin­cid­ing with intense heat­waves on land in crit­i­cal olive-grow­ing areas of Italy, France and Croatia.

“Heat stress days and trop­i­cal nights are increas­ing in Europe,” the report stated. ​“2024 saw the sec­ond-high­est num­ber of heat stress days and trop­i­cal nights on record.” 

“Averaged over Europe, this meant nearly a month of at least strong heat stress and around 12 trop­i­cal nights, with vari­a­tions across the con­ti­nent, par­tic­u­larly in south­east­ern Europe, which saw record-break­ing num­bers of both,” the report added.

Conversely, days of unusu­ally cold con­di­tions reached a record low in Europe dur­ing 2024.

The area expe­ri­enc­ing sub-zero tem­per­a­tures con­tin­ued to shrink. According to the report, 2024 recorded the most sig­nif­i­cant area ever with fewer than 90 days of frost.

All glac­i­ers in Europe con­tin­ued los­ing ice, with those in the Alps shrink­ing by 22 to 93 per­cent com­pared to 1970.

Throughout 2024, sig­nif­i­cant events and alter­ations were observed in rain­fall, river lev­els, and flood­ing, with Western Europe expe­ri­enc­ing one of its wettest years.

Extreme flood­ing increased in 2024, notably Storm Boris in cen­tral and east­ern Europe and the par­tic­u­larly dev­as­tat­ing storm Dana in Spain at the end of October.

During this period, Valencia broke rain­fall records for one‑, six‑, and 12-hour inter­vals within a few days.

Storm Boris caused record floods across eight coun­tries, affect­ing 8,500 kilo­me­ters of rivers.

Amid such com­plex con­di­tions, wild­fires sig­nif­i­cantly impacted areas expe­ri­enc­ing pro­longed dry weather.

Near Athens, Greece, a fire cov­er­ing 11,000 hectares evac­u­ated 16,000 res­i­dents in August.

In north­ern and cen­tral Portugal, high tem­per­a­tures com­bined with dry con­di­tions and strong winds in September caused a record num­ber of wild­fires, burn­ing 110,000 hectares in a week.

The dev­as­ta­tion in Portugal alone accounted for 32 per­cent of all burnt land in Europe in 2024.

The European report was pub­lished shortly after the United Nations’ Emissions Gap Report, which pre­dicts that global sur­face tem­per­a­tures could rise 3.1 °C above pre-indus­trial lev­els by the end of the cen­tury under cur­rent con­di­tions.

The European report also high­lights the increas­ing dam­age and costs caused by cli­mate change and extreme weather events.

Recent research by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research projects that global cli­mate-related costs could exceed $38 (€33) tril­lion by 2049.

“The 2024 report reveals that almost one-third of the river net­work exceeded high flood thresh­olds, and heat stress con­tin­ues to increase in Europe, high­light­ing the impor­tance of build­ing greater resilience,” said Florence Rabier, direc­tor-gen­eral at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), a key part­ner of Copernicus.

Rabier also empha­sized how infor­ma­tion pro­vided by Copernicus and WMO sup­ports adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies.

“Fifty-one per­cent of European cities now have a ded­i­cated cli­mate adap­ta­tion plan,” Rabier remarked.

Saulo, from the WMO, added that Europe must con­tinue its efforts to pre­vent fur­ther warm­ing.

“Every addi­tional frac­tion of a degree of tem­per­a­ture rise mat­ters because it accen­tu­ates the risks to our lives, economies and planet,” she said. ​“Adaptation is essen­tial.” 

“WMO and its part­ners are inten­si­fy­ing efforts to strengthen early warn­ing sys­tems and cli­mate ser­vices to help deci­sion-mak­ers and soci­ety become more resilient,” Saulo con­cluded. ​“We are mak­ing progress but must move fur­ther, faster and together.”