2024 ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest year ever: EU

PARIS: This year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest in recorded history with warming above 1.5C, EU climate monitor Copernicus said on Thursday, days before nations are due to gather for crunch UN climate talks.

The European agency said the world was passing a “new milestone” of temperature records that should be a call to accelerate action to cut planet-heating emissions at the UN negotiations in Azerbaijan next week.

Last month, marked by deadly flooding in Spain and Hurricane Milton in the United States, was the second hottest Meanwhile, average global temperatures have reached new peaks, as have concentrations of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree in temperature rises heralds progressively more damaging impacts.

Last month the UN said the current course of action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, while all existing climate pledges taken in full would still amount to a devastating 2.6C temperature rise.