2024 hottest year ever, crossed 1.5 global warming limit

GENEVA: The last two years saw average temperatures exceed a critical warming limit for the first time, Europe´s climate monitor said on Friday, as the UN demanded “trail-blazing” climate action.

While this does not mean the internationally-agreed 1.5C warming threshold has been permanently breached, the United Nations warned it was in “grave danger”.

“Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

“There´s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act -- now.”

The UN´s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said six international datasets all confirmed that 2024 was the hottest on record, extending a decade-long “extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures”.

Last year was also the highest on record across the mainland United States, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provided one of the datasets.

Another record-breaking year is not anticipated in 2025, as climate sceptic Donald Trump takes office, and a deadline looms for nations to commit to curbing rising levels of greenhouse gases.

But scientists predict that 2025 will likely still rank among the top three warmest years in the history books.

This excess heat supercharges extreme weather, and 2024 saw countries from Spain to Kenya, the United States and Nepal hit by disasters that cost more than $300 billion by some estimates.

Los Angeles is battling deadly wildfires that have destroyed thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. US President Joe Biden said the fires were the most “devastating” to hit California and were proof that “climate change is real”.

WMO said its consolidated analysis of the six datasets showed that global average surface temperatures were 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“This means that we have likely just experienced the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5C above the 1850-1900 average,” it said.

Europe´s climate monitor Copernicus, which provided one of the datasets examined, for its part found that both of the past two years had exceeded the warming limit set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, as global temperatures soar “beyond what modern humans have ever experienced”.