Earth’s warming exceeded 1.5C on an annual basis for the first time in 2024, according to two major climate science agencies. It’s the most potent evidence yet that countries are failing to meet a Paris Agreement goal of limiting global heating to that level as a decades-long average.
The amount of time left to avoid eclipsing the goal “is now wafer thin,” said Colin Morice, a UK Met Office scientist, in a statement.
Scientists sounded the alarm long before last year ended that 2024 would become the hottest year on record and almost certainly the first to surpass the 1.5C limit. Now both of those milestones have been confirmed in official statistical releases from two independent scientific agencies.
Insured Losses From Natural Disasters Hit $140B as Climate Change ‘Shows Its Claws’
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Service measured the 2024 global average temperature to be 1.6C above the pre-industrial average, and the UK Met Office to be 1.53C above it. (Three other groups are expected to report Friday.)
The clear acceleration in rising temperatures has puzzled scientists, even as the evidence of the fast-warming atmosphere became impossible to miss.
The hottest day ever recorded