Climate crisis breaks records in 2024: ‘The future is in our hands’

It was predicted in December, but it has now been officially confirmed: 2024 was the warmest year on record, with the average temperature surpassing the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold above pre-industrial levels for the first time. The alarming climate data for last year is being made public this Friday, in a coordinated effort by leading institutions that monitor the planet’s climate: the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States, the U.K.’s Met Office, Berkeley Earth, and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which coordinates the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.

“The future is in our hands – swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Speaking at a press conference on Thursday ahead of the data release, the Italian climatologist stressed that these findings are facts, not personal opinions. “Honestly, I am running out of metaphors to explain the warming we are seeing,” Buontempo said. “The underlying physics is very clear,” with the world’s warmer air and seas leading to more frequent and intense extreme events — from heatwaves to heavier rainfall and more destructive storms.

According to the C3S report, the average global temperature in 2024 reached 15.10°C, which is 0.12 degrees Celsius higher than the year considered to be the warmest until now, which was none other than 2023. In fact, every year from 2015 to 2024 ranks among the 10 warmest on record since measurements began.

When meteorologists state that 2024 has set the warmest average temperature ever recorded on Earth, they mean that no higher global temperature has been observed since reliable measuring instruments became available. The C3S Service traces this threshold back to 1850. However, the record set in 2024 is also the warmest in several thousand years.

While we lack thermometer records from that time, paleoclimatology — which reconstructs past climates using tree rings, ice cores, and sediment samples — suggests that the current warming is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years, stretching back to the Middle Ages. Paleoclimatologists believe this trend holds true for at least the last 11,000 years, a period coinciding with the Holocene, the epoch during which agriculture and human civilization developed.

The 2024 record also represents a 1.6-degree increase above pre-industrial levels, set between 1850 and 1900. This is another significant milestone: 2024 marks the first calendar year in which the global temperature has risen by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, a threshold surpassed each month since July 2023, with the exception of July 2024. Although an increase of just 1.5 degrees may not seem substantial, it is highly significant when considering the global average temperature. This figure accounts for the entire Earth, combining records from both the hottest and coldest regions, and spans the variations of winter, spring, summer, and autumn over the course of an entire year.

On the other hand, a 1.5-degree increase in average global temperature marks the first safety margin set by the Paris Agreement on climate change, which establishes a limit not to be exceeded. It is specifically mentioned in Article 2 of the pact reached in Paris in 2015: “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”

The fact that 2024 will be the first year to surpass a 1.5-degree increase does not mean that this target has been breached. As explained by Samantha Burgess, head of climate strategy at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), for this to be the case, the average must be taken over a longer period. “By long-term, I mean a period of at least 20 years,” she pointed out.

Much needs to change if the situation is not to worsen in the coming decades. While the IPCC maintains that there is still a chance of bringing the average temperature back below 1.5°C, the United Nations currently predicts that, based on existing commitments to reduce emissions — commitments that are set to be renewed in 2025 — the second safety threshold of 2°C will also be exceeded by the end of the century.

Last year also set a new record for the highest average global temperature recorded in a single day. On July 22, temperatures reached 17.16°C. Furthermore, 2024 was not only the warmest year on a planetary scale, but also the warmest year for all continents, with the exception of Antarctica and Australasia (a region comprising Australia, Melanesia, and New Zealand). In Europe, 2024 saw an average temperature of 10.69°C, 1.47 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 period and 0.28 degrees higher than the previous record-holder, 2020.

This worrying record has been broken across all continents, but also across large parts of the oceans, particularly the North Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the western Pacific. This warming has notably affected the Mediterranean, a region linked to the worsening of storms, and it is believed to have played a role in the catastrophic floods in Spain in October.

According to the assessment presented by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere also reached a record value in 2024, about 5% above the 1991-2020 average. The combination of extreme temperatures and high humidity has increased thermal stress. The C3S platform, promoted by the European Commission, highlights that much of the Northern Hemisphere experienced more days than usual with at least “strong thermal stress” during 2024, with some areas seeing more days with “extreme thermal stress.” In fact, another significant record occurred on July 10, when it was calculated that approximately 44% of the planet was affected by “strong” to “extreme” thermal stress, marking the largest surface area ever recorded with these values.

“These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people,” said Burgess.

The extraordinary data from the last two years have also been influenced by the El Niño phenomenon, a meteorological event linked to the warming of the Pacific Ocean. Although El Niño ended in 2024, Buontempo has explained that “typically, the peak in the average global temperature follows the peak of El Niño.” In this regard, the Copernicus Climate Change Service expects 2025 to be a warm year, though not as extreme as 2023 or 2024.

Nevertheless, climatologists agree that this global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, primarily generated by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas). To stabilize the global climate, these emissions must be drastically reduced. The most concerning aspect of this climate assessment is that global greenhouse gas production has not yet been reduced and continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. Last year, the concentration of carbon dioxide reached a new record of 422 parts per million, while methane reached 1,897 parts per billion.

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