New data from the European climate service Copernicus confirms that 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded worldwide. On average, global temperatures last year were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than in pre-industrial times for the first time – by exactly 1.60 degrees. Previously, this important threshold had only been exceeded temporarily, but not for an entire year. Both the air and the sea surface reached record temperatures in 2024, driven primarily by man-made climate change. In addition, there were natural environmental factors, including the climate phenomenon of El Niño, which further fueled the development. What does this mean for the Paris climate target?
For decades, humanity has been emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases, which accumulate in the atmosphere and warm the earth. This climate change and its consequences for the environment and us humans are now well known and well documented. An important threshold is global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era. Because above this level, the consequences will be significantly more devastating. Therefore, at the World Climate Conference in Paris in 2015, the states agreed not to exceed this threshold if possible.
Has the 1.5 degree limit been reached?
Now the European Commission’s climate service, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), has published its report on the latest climatic developments in 2024. To do this, the scientists closely monitored, documented and evaluated important climate indicators. According to the report, the year 2024 broke several dismal records, including daily, monthly and annual highs in temperatures on land and in the sea. The main driver of development is man-made climate change and greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, as the team explains. Their concentration in the atmosphere continued to rise compared to 2023 and in 2024, at 422 parts per million (ppm) for CO2 and 1897 ppm for methane, they were around three ppm higher than in 2023 – new record highs.
As a result, the global average temperature of the air near the Earth’s surface was 15.1 degrees Celsius last year. This means that 2024 was another 0.12 degrees warmer than 2023 and overall the warmest year since records began in 1850. Compared to the pre-industrial period between 1850 and 1900, temperatures in 2024 were 1.60 degrees higher. This makes 2024 the first calendar year that the important threshold of 1.5 degrees has been exceeded not only temporarily, but even as a whole annual average. With the exception of July, all months last year exceeded this value. Notably, July 22 was the hottest day on record with a global temperature of 17.16 degrees Celsius. The two-year average for 2023 and 2024 also exceeds the 1.5 degree threshold. This limit was also set in the Paris Agreement, but refers to a 20-year average. Accordingly, the Earth has not yet achieved this goal, but is getting closer and closer to it.
Records of global proportions
This is also suggested by other details in the report. Temperatures reached peak values on almost all continents including Europe in 2024, with the only exceptions being Antarctica and the region around Australia. Air temperatures also rose extremely over large parts of the world’s oceans, particularly in the North Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. As a result, water temperatures near the sea surface also reached new record levels, at least in the first half of the year. On average, the world’s oceans were 20.87 degrees Celsius warm in 2024 – 0.51 degrees more than the average for the three decades between 1991 and 2020. These developments were also fueled by the climate phenomenon of El Niño in the Pacific, which ended in mid-2024 and turned into a cooler La Niña phase passed.
2024 was also marked by numerous natural disasters and extreme weather events, including hurricanes and heavy rain, but also droughts, forest fires and heat waves with high humidity. This was noticeable, for example, in the water vapor in the atmosphere, which also reached a record high in 2024 and was one percent higher than in 2023. At times, 44 percent of the earth suffered from severe heat stress, which was harmful to health. “These high global temperatures, coupled with record global levels of atmospheric water vapor in 2024, led to unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events that brought misery to millions of people,” says Samantha Burgess from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
Climate change was also noticeable in the polar regions. In Antarctica, for example, the sea ice shrank again at a similar rate to 2023, as satellite data shows. The situation was less dramatic in the Arctic, but there too the ice melted significantly in the second half of the year.
Appeal for more climate protection
The fact that 2024 was a record year in terms of climate is also confirmed by the data from other weather and climate services that were also included in the current Copernicus report, including the World Weather Organization (WMO), NASA and other US and British organizations. “All internationally compiled global temperature datasets show that 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850,” says Carlo Buontempo from C3S. However, this is not unexpected: “The current development is still within the framework of what the climate models predicted years ago. That alone is bad enough when you look at the effects of warming,” says Mojib Latif from the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR). According to many researchers, the extreme weather of 2024 will provide a foretaste of what life would be like in a permanent 1.5 degree world.
The scientists therefore also combine their Copernicus report with an appeal for more climate protection and better adaptation to the climate impacts: “Humanity is responsible for its own fate. The future is in our hands – quick and decisive action can change the development of our future climate,” says Buontempo. And Mauro Facchini from the European Commission says: “The environmental and climate targets set by the European Union are ambitious and require appropriate action, especially in light of the results presented today.” With these “we can make informed decisions to mitigate climate change and ourselves The report thus confirms once again that emissions must fall significantly more and faster than before in order to be able to achieve the 1.5 degree target or at least avoid even worse scenarios.
Sources: Copernicus Climate Change Service, report “2024 Global Climate Highlights”