MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Climate change watchdogs concur 2024 was the hottest year ever

“We didn't have just one or two record years, but a full ten-year series,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo of Argentina said

Last year was the hottest on record and it even surpassed the global warming limit, the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Program and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concurred. In addition, 2023 and 2024 saw average global temperatures exceed the internationally agreed 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold

The assessment from the WMO “is clear,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutérres said. “Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025. There's still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act — now,” he insisted.

The WMO confirmed these findings just days before Donald Trump's inauguration. The Republican candidate pledged to double fossil fuel production. Trump has called climate change a hoax, despite the global scientific consensus that it is human-caused and will have severe consequences if not addressed. In this scenario, Guterres underlined that “the WMO assessment demonstrates once again that global warming is a cold hard reality.”

“The climate story is unfolding before our eyes. We didn't have just one or two record years, but a full ten-year series. This has been accompanied by devastating and extreme weather conditions, rising sea levels, and melting ice, all driven by record levels of greenhouse gases due to human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo of Argentina.

“It is important to emphasize that a single year of more than 1.5 °C for one year does not mean that we have failed to meet the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, which are measured over decades rather than an individual year. However, it is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters,” she added.

Meanwhile, Copernicus' Samantha Burgess pointed out that “the main reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” which has had devastating repercussions, such as the accelerated melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, and historically high ocean temperatures, which continue to exacerbate the effects of climate change.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which said climate change is pushing the planet's temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans. The planet's average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in 1850-1900, the “pre-industrial period” before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale, C3S said. These measurements were 0.1 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record set in 2023.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders promised to try to stop average temperatures exceeding 1.5C, to avoid more severe and costly climate disasters.