Earth saw its hottest year in 2024, breaching a major climate threshold – the national one

The land was registered to her The hottest year Ever since 2024, with such a big jump that the planet has undergone a temporary major climate Several weather monitoring agencies announced on Friday.

Last year’s average global temperature easily surpassed 2023’s record heat and continues to rise. It has exceeded the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century called for by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the UK Met Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency. .

The European team calculated a temperature increase of 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit). Japan found 1.57°C (2.83°F) and Britain 1.53°C (2.75°F) in harmonized data releases early Friday morning European time.

European scientists said US observing teams – NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private agency Berkeley Earth – will release their numbers later Friday, but all are likely to show record heat for 2024. The six groups make up for data gaps in observations dating back to 1850, in different ways, which is why the numbers are a little different.

“The main reason for these record temperatures is the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from burning coal, oil and gas, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate officer 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, it exceeded the temperature of 2023 in the European database by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). This is an extraordinarily large jump. Scientists said that until the last two extremely hot years, global temperature records had been exceeded by only hundredths of a degree.

Burgess said the past 10 years are the 10 hottest years on record and are likely to be the hottest in 125,000 years.

Copernicus found that July 10 was the hottest day ever recorded by humans, with the average global temperature reaching 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many scientists have said that the biggest contributor to ever-rising temperatures is the burning of fossil fuels. A temporary natural El Niño warming in the central Pacific added a small amount, Burgess said, and an undersea volcanic eruption in 2022 ended up cooling the atmosphere because it put more reflective particles into the atmosphere as well as water vapor.

“This is a warning light that goes off on the ground dashboard, and it needs immediate attention,” said Marshall Shepherd, a professor of meteorology at the University of Georgia. “Hurricane Helen, flooding in Spain and weather conditions fueling wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate shift in climate change. We still have a few gears to go.”

“Climate change alarm bells are ringing almost constantly, which may leave the public unaware of the urgency, like police sirens in New York City,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Center for Climate Research. “But in the case of climate, the alerts are louder, and emergencies are now beyond just temperature.”

There have been 27 climate disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damage, just one short of the record set in 2023, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The cost of these disasters in the United States amounted to $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helen was the costliest and deadliest of the year with at least 219 deaths and $79.6 billion in damage.

“In the 1980s, Americans experienced more than a billion climate and weather catastrophes on average every four months,” Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said in an email about the inflation-adjusted NOAA numbers. “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.”

Trending now

• The Liberals will get a new leader on March 9, which will tighten rules on who can vote

• The company that processes plant-based milk linked to Listeria is permanently closing its plants

“Accelerating increases in global temperatures mean more property damage and impacts on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said Cathy Jacobs, a hydrologist at the University of Arizona.

This is the first time it has exceeded the 1.5 degree threshold in any year, with the exception of the 2023 measurement by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists who were skeptical of global warming.

Scientists were quick to point out that the 1.5 target is a long-term warming target, which is now defined as a 20-year average. The long-term temperature rise since pre-industrial times is now 1.3°C (2.3°F).

“The 1.5°C threshold isn’t just a number — it’s a red flag. Exceeding it by even one year shows how dangerously close we are to violating the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” Victor Gensini, a climate scientist at Northern Illinois University, said in an email. A massive 2018 UN study found that keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius could save coral reefs from extinction, preserve the loss of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and prevent the death and suffering of many people. the people.

Francis described the threshold as “dead in the water.”

Burgess described it as highly likely that the Earth would exceed the 1.5 degree threshold, but described the Paris Agreement as a “very important international policy” to which countries around the world must remain committed.

European and British calculations indicate that the cold La Niña phenomenon, instead of the El Niño phenomenon that rose last year, is likely that the year 2025 will not be quite as hot as the year 2024. They expect it to be the third warmest year. However, the first six days of January — despite frigid temperatures in the eastern United States — were on average slightly warmer, the hottest start to a year so far, according to Copernicus data.

Scientists are still divided on whether global warming is accelerating.

Carlo Bontempo, director of Copernicus, said there is not enough data to see an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but it appears that ocean heat content is not only rising, but rising at a faster rate.

“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges — climate challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Bontempo said.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was all like watching the end of a “dystopian science fiction movie.” “We are now reaping what we sowed.”