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This year is “virtually certain” to surpass 2023 as the world’s warmest since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday.
The data was released ahead of next week’s UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will try to reach an agreement on a significant increase in funding to tackle climate change.
Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has dampened expectations for the talks.
C3S stated that from January to October, the average global temperature was so high that 2024 was certain to be the world’s hottest year – unless the temperature anomaly for the rest of the year dropped to near zero.
“The fundamental, underlying cause of this year’s record is climate change,” C3S Director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.
“The climate is warm, generally. It’s warming on all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see these records being broken,” he said.
The scientists also said that 2024 will be the first year in which the planet’s temperature is more than 1.5°C hotter than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas are the main causes of global warming.
A climate scientist at the public research university ETH Zurich, Sonia Seneviratne, said she was not surprised by the milestone.
She urged governments at COP29 to agree on stronger action to reduce their economies’ reliance on CO2-emitting fossil fuels.
“The limits set in the Paris Agreement are starting to crumble due to the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,” Seneviratne said.
Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5°C (2.7°F) to avoid its worst consequences.
The world has not yet breached that target – which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5°C over decades – but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris goal around 2030.
“It’s basically just around the corner now,” Buontempo said.
Every fraction of a temperature increase exacerbates extreme weather.
In October, catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record wildfires ravaged Peru, and flooding in Bangladesh destroyed more than one million tonnes of rice, sending food prices soaring.
In the U.S., Hurricane Milton was also worsened by human-induced climate change.
C3S’ records go back to 1940 and are cross-checked with global temperature records dating back to 1850.
(NAN)
