EU space programme believes 2024 will “almost certainly” be the hottest year on record. Climate change service Copernicus said 2024 marks a “new milestone” and should raise ambitions at the COP29 climate summit.
The Copernicus report said 2024 is likely to be the first year in which it will be more than 1.5 °C (2.7F) hotter than before the industrial revolution, a level of warming that has alarmed scientists. Dr. Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said:
This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming climate change conference.
Scientists found that global temperatures over the past 12 months were 1.62C higher than the average for the 1850-1900 period, when humanity began burning huge amounts of coal, oil and gas.
In their monthly climate bulletin, they noted that October 2024 was the second warmest October on record, second only to October 2023, when temperatures were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels. It was the 15th month in the last 16 to exceed the 1.5C mark.
World leaders have promised to stop the planet heating up by 1.5C by the end of the century, but so far about twice that amount is underway.
Scientists say one year over the threshold does not mean they have missed their target, as temperature rises are measured in decades rather than years, but warn it will put more people and ecosystems on the brink of survival. Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus, said:
Our civilisation never had to cope with a climate as warm as the current one. This inevitably pushes our ability to respond to extreme events – and adapt to a warmer world – to the absolute limit.
Copernicus’ findings are based on billions of meteorological measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations. The temperature analyses in the ERA5 dataset on which the bulletin relies are slightly different from other known datasets used by climate scientists in the US and Japan.
Year of extreme weather events
The scientists also found that Arctic sea ice reached the fourth highest monthly extent for October, 19 per cent below average, while Antarctic sea ice extent reached the second highest for October, 8 per cent below average.
Researchers pointed to the heavier-than-normal rains that hit much of Europe, including Spain, where flash floods killed more than 200 people as they swept over villages and inundated homes with mud.
Last week, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) found that concentrations of air pollutants causing the planet to heat up have reached record levels in 2023. The study found that carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations rising by more than 10 per cent in just two decades, warming the planet and intensifying extreme weather. Buontempo added:
The most effective solution to address the climate challenges is a global commitment on emissions.
