The year 2024 has officially been declared the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2023, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The new data marked a critical milestone in the escalating climate crisis.
EU’s meteorological association Copernicus reported that 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial baseline, making it the first calendar year to surpass the 1.5°C limit agreed upon under the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.
“We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5ºC level defined in the Paris Agreement and the average of the last two years is already above this level,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
“Hopefully that is really a wake-up call for humanity,” says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) vice chair Diana Urge-Vorsatz.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), NASA and Copernicus released their annual global temperature analyses and all found that Earth has warmed roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above temperatures in the 1800s, before people began burning vast reserves of fossil fuels. The numbers vary slightly. NOAA reports 1.46 degrees C of warming, NASA, 1.47; and the EU’s Copernicus, 1.6.
Scientists have cautioned that sustained breaches of this threshold pose severe risks to both humans and ecosystems. The record set last year “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” noted Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London.
A decade of record-breaking heat
The report highlighted an alarming trend; all of the world’s 10 hottest years occurred in the past decade, from 2015 to 2024. It also listed numerous records set last year, including the hottest day in July, record-breaking monthly temperatures from January to June, and unprecedented levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Behind these records is a stark reality. “Every fraction of a degree … brings more harm to people and ecosystems,” said Rogelj.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reports that 2024 was the warmest year on record, surpassing previous highs since 1850.
- Global average temperature: 15.10°C, 0.12°C higher than 2023.
- 2024 was 0.72°C warmer than the 1991–2020 average, and 1.60°C above pre-industrial levels.
- First year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
- The past decade was the warmest on record.
- Every month from January to June 2024 was warmer than previous years. August 2024 matched the record warmth of August 2023. July to December 2024 was the second warmest for each corresponding month, after 2023.
- Three record-breaking seasons:
- Winter (Dec 2023–Feb 2024): +0.78°C
- Spring (Mar–May 2024): +0.68°C
- Summer (Jun–Aug 2024): +0.69°C
- On July 22, 2024, global temperature reached a new daily record of 17.16°C.
The toll of extreme weather
The impacts of 2024’s extreme heat were devastating.
- In the US, ultra-warm ocean temperatures fueled back-to-back hurricanes that claimed hundreds of lives.
- Spain suffered catastrophic floods, killing over 200 people.
- In the Amazon, rivers plummeted to record lows during the region’s worst drought.
- The Philippines faced an extraordinary typhoon season with six storms in just 30 days.
According to scientific analyses, the climate crisis amplified the severity of these events, underscoring the urgency for global action to mitigate its effects.
2024’s record heat serves as a dire warning. While single-year breaches are concerning, the long-term trend of rising temperatures signals an increasingly dangerous future unless significant efforts are made to curb emissions and adapt to a warming world.