Two years ago, at the United Nations COP27 climate conference in Egypt, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that global leaders needed to address greenhouse gas emissions to keep air temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the year 2100.
It’s only the start of 2025, and we’ve already crossed that threshold.
According to climate scientists at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, global temperatures reached the highest levels on record in 2024, rising 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and making the year the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1850. That’s a 2.88 degrees Fahrenheit rise globally.
According to a Copernicus report released Friday, the global average temperature for the year was 15.10 degrees Celsius (59.18 degrees Fahrenheit). “This is equivalent to 1.6 degrees Celsius above an estimate of the 1850-1900 temperature designated to be the pre-industrial level,” the report says.
The annual report came out the same week that Los Angeles residents faced catastrophic wildfires that leveled more than 9,000 buildings and killed at least 10 people. Globally, the climate crisis has intensified the severity and frequency of natural disasters, including drought, hurricanes and flooding.
Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which contributed to the report, noted that the temperature rise is a significant contributor to global climate-related disasters.
“These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people,” Burgess said in a statement.
Other highlights from the report:
- For the period of 2015 to 2024, every year was one of the 10 warmest years on record, according to Copernicus.
- On July 22, 2024, the daily global average temperature broke a record, reaching 17.16 degrees Celsius, or 62.89 degrees Fahrenheit.
- All continental regions except Antarctica and Australasia had their warmest-ever years.
Scientists have attributed this type of climate change to human causes, particularly carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Increased home energy use and the massive amounts of energy that AI technology requires haven’t made the task of reducing reliance on fossil fuels any easier.
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