Shafaqna English- Europe’s climate service said on Friday (10 Jan 2025) that 2024 was the hottest calendar year on record and the first in which average temperatures exceeded the key limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
Data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows that the average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record-hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.
The heating is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the damage to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate around the world until coal, oil, and gas are replaced. The Paris Agreement target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been missed but does show the climate emergency continues to intensify. Every year in the past decade has been one of the 10 hottest, in records that go back to 1850.
Source: Guardian