Europe’s climate agency says this year is likely to break 2023’s record for the hottest year ever.
Researchers at the Copernicus agency also predicted 2024 will be the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than what is called the pre-industrial period. That period, from 1850 to 1900, is when humans began the widespread burning of fossil fuels.
The new data was released ahead of the United Nations COP29 climate meeting taking place this week in Azerbaijan. At that meeting, international representatives are expected to agree to call for more spending to fight the worldwide effects of climate change.
The European climate agency said that from January to October, the average world temperature rose so much that 2024 would almost surely be the world's hottest year on record.
Copernicus said its records date back to 1940 and are compared with world temperature records going back to 1850.
The director of Copernicus, Carlo Buontempo, told Reuters news agency the main cause of this year's record is climate change. "The climate is warming, generally. It's warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken," Buontempo said.
Buontempo also said the data clearly show such warming would not be happening without the continued release of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Scientists say carbon dioxide is released by the burning of coal, oil and gas.
Buontempo noted the importance of worldwide observations and data collection to support the group’s findings and predictions. Copernicus gathers data from billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
Sonia Seneviratne is a climate scientist at public research university ETH Zurich in Switzerland. She told Reuters she was not surprised by the new prediction.
Seneviratne urged delegates at COP29 to agree to stronger action to limit the use of carbon-producing fossil fuels. "The limits that were set in the Paris agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world," she said.
Many countries agreed to try to prevent the average temperature of the atmosphere from increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over a period of years by signing the 2015 Paris Agreement. Officials from Copernicus have said that the 1.5-degree Celsius limit could be passed around 2030. "It's basically around the corner now," Buontempo said.
Climate scientists say each increase in temperature can fuel extreme weather. Recent examples of weather-related events include flooding that killed hundreds of people in Spain and wildfires in Peru. In Bangladesh, flooding destroyed more than 1 million tons of rice, driving food prices higher.
I'm Bryan Lynn.
