2024 ‘certain’ to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

PARIS: This year is “effectively certain” to be the hottest on record and the first above a critical threshold to protect the planet from dangerously overheating, Europe´s climate monitor said on Monday.

The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which countries rich and poor were hammered by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity´s role in Earth´s rapid warming.

Copernicus said an unprecedented spell of extraordinary heat had pushed average global temperatures so high between January and November that this year was sure to eclipse 2023 as the hottest yet.

“At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record,” the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin. Copernicus scientist Julien Nicolas told AFP that 2025 would start with global temperatures “at near-record level” and this could persist for the next few months.

In another grim milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than before the industrial revolution when humanity started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. According to provisional data, Copernicus said the year to date was almost 1.6C warmer than the pre-industrial era, taken as between 1850 and 1900.