Hottest year on record, EU space programme finds
It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has said. The prediction comes as diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day after the US, a significant historical polluter of greenhouse gases, elects Donald Trump, a climate change denier, as president.
The report found that 2024 will be the first year that is over 1.5C hotter than before the industrial revolution, making it the hottest year on record. This has alarmed scientists.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming climate change conference,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Global temperatures for the past year were 1.62C higher than the average between 1850-1900. That was when large amounts of coal, gas, and oil began to be burned.
October 2024, they said, was the second warmest October since records began, with only October 2023 being higher, when temperatures were 1.65C higher than the preindustrial levels. It was the 15th month in the past 16 to be more than 1.5C greater.
World leaders pledged to combat the planet from heating by 1.5C by the end of the century. But at the rate things are going, it is on track to be double that!
A single year above the threshold, scientists say, does not mean that they have missed the target. Temperature rise is measured over decades rather than years. But it push more people and ecosystems to the brink of survival.
“Our civilisation never had to cope with a climate as warm as the current one,” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus. “This inevitably pushes our ability to respond to extreme events – and adapt to a warmer world – to the absolute limit.”
The findings are based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations.
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