2024 ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, EU’s global warming monitor says

Nov. 7 (UPI) — This year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest on record, according to the European Union’s global warming monitor, which said 2024 is also on track to be the first where the annual temperature will be 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The assessment, published Wednesday, comes from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service ahead next week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as COP29.

The report states that the average global temperature for the first 10 months of the year was 0.71 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average and 0.16 degrees Celsius hotter than the same period last year.

For 2024 not to be the hottest on record, the average global temperature would have to drop to almost zero, it said.

It is also “virtually certain” that the annual temperature rise for the year will be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level — the threshold that 196 countries vowed to cap global temperature rise in the Paris Agreement of December 2015.

According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, passing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level risks creating far more severe climate change phenomena, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.

“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.

European temperatures were above average over almost the entire continent, the European Union monitor said, adding that outside of Europe, temperatures were most above average in northern Canada, and well above average over the central and western United States, northern Tibet, Japan and Australia.

It also reported that Arctic sea ice reached its fourth lowest month extent for October, with Antarctic sea ice being at its second lowest for the month.