2024 on track to beat heat record, EU scientists predict

Onome Amuge

A recent report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) concluded that 2024 is “virtually certain” to surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.

The data was released on Thursday, just days before the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where participating countries will aim to reach an agreement on significantly increasing funding to combat climate change.

C3S indicated that the average global temperature from January to October had been so high that 2024 was certain to become the hottest year on record, unless the temperature anomaly for the rest of the year plummeted to nearly zero.

Carlo Buontempo, C3S Director  elaborated on the significance of the finding, telling Reuters that the underlying cause of this year’s record-breaking temperatures is climate change.

He underscored that the climate is warming, generally affecting every continent and ocean basin, adding that inevitably, the record temperatures will continue to be broken.

C3S scientists further revealed that 2024 will be the first year in which the Earth’s average temperature exceeds 1.5°C above the pre-industrial period, which spans the years 1850-1900 when large-scale burning of fossil fuels began.

Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist from ETH Zurich, expressed that she was not taken aback by this milestone in the context of climate change.

Calling for more ambitious action from governments, Seneviratne urged the leaders attending COP29 to agree on stronger measures to shift their economies away from fossil fuels, which emit large amounts of CO2.

The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to curb global warming to below 1.5°C (2.7°F), a target that was established to help mitigate its most severe consequences.

While the world has not yet breached this threshold, C3S expects the Paris target to be surpassed by approximately 2030.