2024 set to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

According to Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2024 is "effectively certain" to become the hottest year on record, surpassing a critical temperature threshold that is essential for preventing catastrophic climate impacts.

The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which countries rich and poor were hammered by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity's role in Earth's rapid warming, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Copernicus said an unprecedented spell of extraordinary heat had pushed average global temperatures so high between January and November that this year was sure to eclipse 2023 as the hottest yet.

"At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record," the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin.

In another grim milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times before humanity started burning large volumes of fossil fuels.


Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5C over a decades-long period would greatly imperil the planet, and the world agreed under the Paris climate accord to strive to limit warming to this safer threshold.

Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess said a single year above 1.5C "does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever".

The world is nowhere near on track to meeting the 1.5C target.

In October, the UN said the current direction of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming.

Emissions from fossil fuels keep rising despite a global pledge to move the world away from coal, oil and gas.

When burned, fossil fuels release greenhouse gases that warm Earth's oceans and atmosphere, disrupting climate patterns and the water cycle.

Scientists say that global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and ferocious, and even at present levels climate change is taking its toll.

2024 saw deadly flooding in Spain and Kenya, violent tropical storms in the United States and the Philippines, and severe drought and wildfires across South America.

In total, disasters caused $310 billion in economic losses in 2024, Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re said this month.

Developing countries are particularly vulnerable and by 2035 will need $1.3 trillion a year in outside assistance to cope with climate change.

At UN climate talks in November, wealthy countries committed $300 billion annually by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate.

News.Az