Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C warming limit in 2024

RFI

10 January 2025 at 3:19 am·1-min read

Fish lay dead in severe drought in Mexico's Bustillos Lagoon, 5 June, 2024.

The year 2024 was the hottest ever recorded and the first full year in which global temperatures surpassed 1.5C above pre-industrial times, scientists said on Friday.

The milestone was confirmed by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which said climate change is pushing the planet's temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans.

The planet's average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in 1850-1900, the "pre-industrial period" before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale, C3S said.

This breaks the record set in 2023 by just over 0.1C.

Last year was the world's hottest since records began, and each of the past ten years are now the ten warmest on record.

2024 'certain' to be hottest year ever as emissions continue to drive climate change

Climate change impacts

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders promised to try to stop average temperatures exceeding 1.5C, to avoid more severe and costly climate disasters.

The first year above 1.5C does not breach that target, which measures the longer-term average temperature, but it does take the world a step closer to doing so as fossil fuel emissions continue to heat the atmosphere.

The impacts of climate change are now visible on every continent.

(with Reuters)

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Climate change impacts

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