Surface air temperatures on Earth continue to rise steadily, with data from the European Union’s Copernicus Observatory indicating that 2024 is set to become the hottest year on record.
Moreover, 2024 may be the first year global temperatures exceed 1.5 ºC above the average surface temperatures estimated before the Industrial Revolution.
Specifically, researchers found that the average global temperature anomaly in the first ten months of 2024 was 0.71 ºC higher than the 1991 to 2020 average and 0.16 ºC warmer than in 2023.
See Also:What 485 Million Years of Climate History Tell Us About Today’s CrisisThe 1991 to 2020 average is the latest “climate normal” defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO uses this 30-year period to establish reference values for temperatures and other variables.
October 2024 saw air surface temperatures rise 1.65 ºC above pre-industrial levels, exceeding the 1.5 ºC threshold in 15 of the last 16 months.
“It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” researchers wrote in the latest Copernicus bulletin.
“For 2024 not to set a new record, the average temperature anomaly for the remainder of the year would need to drop to nearly zero,” they added.
Researchers now project that 2024 will set a new global surface air temperature average of 1.55 ºC above pre-industrial levels.
Europe experienced above-average temperatures throughout the entire year.
In October 2024, the average land temperature across Europe was 10.83 ºC, which is 1.23 ºC above the 1991 to 2020 average. However, October 2022 remains the warmest October on record, with temperatures of 1.92 ºC higher than the baseline.
A 1.5 ºC increase above pre-industrial levels is considered a critical threshold. In 2015, dozens of countries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate to keep temperature increases below 2 ºC, with a more ambitious target of staying below 1.5 ºC.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an interdisciplinary scientific body under the United Nations, has identified these temperature thresholds as tipping points for significant changes in Earth’s ecosystems.
According to Copernicus, ocean temperatures are also rising. Apart from specific areas of the southern Pacific and small regions in the northern Pacific and northern Atlantic, sea temperatures in 2024 remain well above the levels recorded from 1991 to 2020.
During the summer of 2024, the Mediterranean Sea reached a record sea surface temperature of 28.56 ºC.
These high sea temperatures are interconnected with land temperatures, precipitation and weather patterns across the Mediterranean region, home to more than 95 percent of global olive oil production.
Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, stated that the latest data “mark a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambitions for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29.”
COP29, the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, is currently taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan – an olive oil-producing country and one of the signatories of the Paris Agreement. The conference will continue until November 22nd.
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