2024 was Earth’s hottest year on record, passing a dangerous warming threshold

It’s official: The twelvemonth 2024 was so nan hottest connected record. It was besides nan first twelvemonth successful recorded history that Earth’s mean somesthesia was higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius supra preindustrial levels.

Scientists outlined those grim milestones successful a report released January 10 by nan European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Multiple different world records were smashed passim 2024, nan researchers noted, including for atmospheric greenhouse state levels, aerial temperatures and oversea aboveground temperatures.

Earth’s world somesthesia successful 2024 was 15.10° C — 1.6 degrees C higher than nan mean from 1850–1900, designated arsenic nan preindustrial reference period. It was besides 0.72 degrees C higher than nan planet’s mean somesthesia from 1991–2020.

July 22, 2024, was a peculiar outlier: The full satellite was sweltering, bringing nan average world somesthesia to a caller record precocious of 17.16° C (63° Fahrenheit).

The report’s uncovering cements what was already evident by December: nan amped-up temperatures connected onshore and oversea successful 2024 were unprecedented since record-keeping began — and the power had deadly consequences astir nan globe.

The planet’s accelerated heat-up is already expanding nan yearly world tally of utmost upwind events, from wildfires to drought to accelerated hurricane intensification. Holding nan world mean temperatures to beneath that 1.5 grade C period — peculiarly by reducing humans’ greenhouse state emissions — would importantly trim nan threat of those hazards, arsenic described successful item successful a 2018 typical study by nan Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change.

The twelvemonth 2024 wasn’t nan first clip Earth’s temperatures person risen supra nan 1.5 grade C period — pockets of nan satellite person risen supra that benchmark galore times successful nan past decade, for illustration (also nan warmest 10 years connected record). And 2023 came awfully close.

But 2024 was nan first twelvemonth nan full globe surpassed nan threshold.