This year, 2024, will be the warmest on record and unusually high temperatures are expected to persist at least into the early months of 2025, the European Union’s (EU) Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Monday, the 9th of December, reports Reuters.
The report follows a 300 billion US dollar climate agreement negotiated at the UN to tackle climate change but criticised by poorer countries as insufficient to cover the rising costs of disasters.
Overall, temperatures in November 2024 were 1.62 degrees warmer than in the pre-industrial period.
C3S pointed out that data from January to November confirms that 2024 will be the hottest year on record and the first in which the global average temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The previous hottest year on record was 2023.
In 2024, extreme weather conditions prevailed around the world, with severe droughts in Italy and South America, devastating floods in Nepal and Sudan. Mexico, Mali and Saudi Arabia were hit by heat waves, the US and the Philippines by devastating cyclones, and Europe by both heat waves and floods.
Scientific studies have confirmed that all these disasters show the effects of man-made climate change.
Global CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, a major contributor to climate change, are set to reach record levels this year, despite the commitment to net zero emissions.
Scientists also warn that even if a La Niña weather phenomenon occurs in 2025, temporarily lowering temperatures, the long-term warming trend will continue, “leading to dangerous heat waves, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones”.
The C3S data cover the period from 1940 and are compared with global temperature records covering the period from 1850.