2024 Temperatures Are on Track for a Record High, Researchers Find

This year will almost certainly be the hottest year on record, beating the high set in 2023, researchers announced on Wednesday.The assessment, by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union agency that monitors global warming, also forecast that 2024 would be the first calendar year in which global temperatures consistently rose 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.That’s the temperature threshold that countries agreed, in the Paris Agreement, that the planet should avoid crossing.

Beyond that amount of warming, scientists say, the Earth will face irreversible damage.Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are dangerously heating up the planet, imperiling biodiversity, increasing sea level rise and making extreme weather events more common and more destructive.“These type of events will get worse and they will get more frequent,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.Recent storms like Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the flooding in Spain demonstrate just how devastating weather intensified by warming can be.Still, it’s important to note that a single year above 1.5 degrees Celsius does not mean the Paris Agreement target has been missed.Under the terms of the pact, for that to happen, temperatures would have to stay at or above 1.5 degrees over a 20-year period.

Each year has natural variability, so one year that’s warmer or cooler is not as important as the general trend of warming.It’s that signal, the steady crawl of record hot year after record hot year, that has alarmed experts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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