2024 'certain' to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

2024 set to be the hottest year on record, marking a 1.5°C rise, underscoring urgent climate action needs

PARIS:

This year is "effectively certain" to be the hottest on record and the first above a critical threshold to protect the planet from dangerously overheating, Europe's climate monitor said Monday.

The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which countries rich and poor were hammered by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity's role in Earth's rapid warming.

Copernicus said an unprecedented spell of extraordinary heat had pushed average global temperatures so high between January and November that this year was sure to eclipse 2023 as the hottest yet.

"At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record," the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin.

Copernicus scientist Julien Nicolas told AFP that 2025 would start with global temperatures "at near-record level" and this could persist for the next few months.

In another grim milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than before the industrial revolution when humanity started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

According to provisional data, Copernicus said the year to date was almost 1.6C warmer than the pre-industrial era, taken as between 1850 and 1900.

Scientists say the risks of climate change increase with every fraction of a degree, and that exceeding 1.5C over a decades-long period would greatly imperil ecosystems and human societies.

Under the Paris accord on climate change, the world agreed to try and keep warming to this safer 1.5C threshold.

Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess said a single year above 1.5C "does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever."

The world is nowhere near on track. In October, the UN said the current direction of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming