The Earth experienced its hottest year in 2024 and surpassed an important climate threshold – National


Earth recorded its hottest year in 2024, with a jump so big that the planet temporarily surpassed a major climate threshold, several climate monitoring agencies announced Friday.

Last year's global average temperature easily surpassed the record heat of 2023 and continued to rise even higher. It exceeded the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century required by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Service, Bureau of Meteorology of the United Kingdom and the Japanese meteorological agency. .

The European team estimated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in data releases coordinated through early Friday European time.

The American monitoring teams – NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private company Berkeley Earth – were due to release their figures later on Friday, but they are all likely to show record heat by 2024, European scientists said. The six groups make up for data gaps in observations going back to 1850 in different ways, which is why the numbers vary slightly.

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“The main reason for these record temperatures is the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from the burning of coal, oil and gas, said Samantha Burgess, Copernicus' climate strategy lead. “As greenhouse gases continue to build up in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to rise, including in the ocean, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”

Last year it eclipsed the 2023 temperature in the European database by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). This is an unusually large jump; Until the last two very hot years, global temperature records were broken by only hundredths of a degree, scientists said.

The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record and probably the warmest in 125,000 years, Burgess said.

July 10 was the hottest day recorded by humans, averaging 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit) in the world, Copernicus found.

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By far the biggest contributor to record warming is the burning of fossil fuels, several scientists said. A temporary natural warming El Nino in the central Pacific added a small amount, and an underwater volcanic eruption in 2022 ended up cooling the atmosphere because it put more reflective particles in the atmosphere in addition to water vapor, Burgess said.

“This is a warning light going on on the Earth's dashboard that immediate attention is needed,” said Marshall Shepherd, a professor of meteorology at the University of Georgia. ”Hurricane Helene, the floods in Spain and the climate shocks that fueled the wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate climate change. “We still have a few marches to go.”

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“Alarm bells related to climate change have been ringing almost constantly, which may be causing the public to become desensitized to the urgency, like police sirens in New York City,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist. from the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “However, in the case of climate, the alarms are becoming louder and emergencies now go far beyond temperature.”

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In the United States, there were 27 weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage, just one shy of the record set in 2023, according to NOAA. The cost of those disasters to the United States was $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helene 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 one billion weather and climate disasters on average every four months,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, said in an email about NOAA's inflation-adjusted numbers. “Now there is one every three weeks, and we already have the first one for 2025, although we are only nine days into the year.”

“Accelerating global temperature rise means more property damage and impacts on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said Kathy Jacobs, a water scientist at the University of Arizona.

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The world passes an important threshold

This is the first time in a year that the 1.5 degree threshold has been exceeded, except for a 2023 measurement by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists skeptical of global warming.

Scientists were quick to point out that the 1.5 goal is long-term warming, now defined as a 20-year average. Long-term warming since pre-industrial times is now 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The 1.5 degree C threshold is not just a number: it is a warning signal. Exceeding it even by a single year shows how dangerously close we are to violating the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” climate scientist Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University said in an email. A massive 2018 United Nations study found that keeping Earth's temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius could save coral reefs from extinction, keep at bay the massive loss of ice sheets in Antarctica and avoid the death and suffering of many people.

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Francis called the threshold “dead in the water.”

Burgess called it extremely likely that Earth will exceed the 1.5 degree threshold, but called the Paris Agreement an “extraordinarily important international policy” that nations around the world should remain committed to.

European and British calculations estimate that with a cooling La Niña instead of last year's warming El Niño, 2025 is likely not to be as hot as 2024. They predict it will turn out to be the third warmest. However, the first six days of January, despite frigid temperatures in the eastern United States, were slightly warmer on average and are the warmest start to the year yet, according to Copernicus data.

Scientists remain divided over whether global warming is accelerating.

There is not enough data to see an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but the heat content of the oceans appears not only to be increasing but to be increasing at a faster rate, said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

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

All of this is like watching the end of “a dystopian science fiction movie,” said climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania. “Now we are reaping what we have sown.”






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By Sarah Mitchell

Sarah has over 12 years of experience providing sharp, unbiased insights into policies, elections, and political developments. She is known for breaking down complex topics ensuring readers are informed and empowered. Her focus on factual reporting makes her a trusted voice in political journalism. Contact With her- Phone: +1 (415) 498-2371

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