This year is the hottest since records began
As the EU climate change service Copernicus announced on 9.12.2024, this year will be the world's warmest year since records began. 2024 will also break the sad record for the average temperature rise. It will be the first year in which it is on average more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average. This means that we will have already exceeded the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Climate Agreement by 2024.
The 1.5 degree target of the Paris Climate Agreement marks a significant temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change. We are causing the planet to warm up by releasing greenhouse gases. As a result, climate disasters such as droughts, fires and floods are becoming more frequent and more intense. Because the measures taken worldwide to protect the climate are not sufficient, we are currently heading towards significantly higher levels of warming with potentially catastrophic consequences.
According to Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Service, exceeding this 1.5 degree mark once does not mean that the Paris Climate Agreement will be broken. "But it does mean that ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever."
The global average temperature anomaly for the current year (January-November 2024) is 0.72 °C above the 1991-2020 average, which is the highest value in this period and 0.14 °C warmer than in the same period in 2023.
At this point, it is virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year since records began and more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
"With Copernicus data from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with a fair degree of certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record," summarizes Samantha Burgess in the press release.
The main driver for this is man-made greenhouse gas emissions
The Global Carbon Project research team forecasts fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 37.4 billion tons in 2024, which corresponds to an increase of 0.8% compared to 2023.
Despite the urgent need to reduce emissions to slow climate change, the researchers say there are "no signs yet" that the world has reached peak fossil CO2 emissions.
Total CO2 emissions in 2024 are expected to amount to 41.6 billion tons, compared to 40.6 billion tons last year.
This year, both fossil fuel and land-use change-related CO2 emissions will increase as drought exacerbates emissions from deforestation and forest fires during the 2023-2024 El Niño climate event.
In addition to the El Niño weather phenomenon, other temperature drivers include increased volcanic activity, more solar activity and, as researchers recently discovered, less cloud formation in low layers of air.
Increasingly dramatic effects
"The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, but we still see no sign that the burning of fossil fuels has peaked," said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of the Global Systems Institute in Exeter, who led the study.
But there is also Professor Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor at UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "Despite a further rise in global emissions this year, the latest data shows evidence of widespread climate action, with the increasing uptake of renewables and electric cars displacing fossil fuels, and a decline in deforestation emissions in recent decades confirmed for the first time."
