Earth Hits Catastrophic Heat Record

The world breached 1.5C of warming last year for the first time, top international agencies said, as an “extraordinary” spike in the global average temperature sparked fears that climate change is accelerating faster than expected. Europe’s Copernicus observation agency confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with average surface temperatures 1.6C above preindustrial levels after greenhouse gas emissions hit a new high. It was the first calendar year that average temperatures surpassed the 2015 Paris accord target of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to well under 2C and preferably to 1.5C. “Honestly, I am running out of metaphors to explain the warming we are seeing,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. He added that a spate of climate disasters last year — ranging from floods to heatwaves — was not a statistical anomaly, but clearly linked to climate change driven by the rise in carbon dioxide and methane. Copernicus said the years from 2015 to 2024 were the 10 warmest on record.The co-ordinated release of 2024 data from six climate-monitoring organisations comes just days before president-elect Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement to tackle climate change.Some businesses around the world have also begun weakening climate targets and rolling back green efforts. “Hitting 1.5C is like watching the first domino fall in a devastating chain reaction,” said Patrick McGuire, a climate researcher at Reading university. “We’re playing with fire. Every fraction of a degree unleashes more intense storms, longer droughts and deadlier heatwaves.”The latest data does not represent a definitive breach of the Paris agreement, whose targets refer to temperature averages measured over more than two decades.But concerns that climate change has gained pace have been fanned by evidence that the world’s oceans have been slower to cool than expected after the naturally occurring El Niño warming effect on the Pacific Ocean.