2024 Was the World’s Hottest Year, Exceeding Paris Climate Agreement Threshold

For the first time ever, global average temperatures have exceeded a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase compared to temperatures observed at pre-industrial levels, crossing a threshold that governments across the world sought to stay under in an agreement made nearly a decade ago.

According to figures released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service on Friday, 2024 had the hottest global average temperatures on record since 1850, when such figures were first documented. The findings by Copernicus are set to be confirmed by other climate agencies throughout the day to highlight the ongoing dangers of temperatures continuing to rise unabated since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015.

“The trajectory is just incredible,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, adding that the world has “the power to change the trajectory from now on.”

But with fossil fuel use reaching new highs in recent years — and world leaders taking insufficient action to promote alternative energy sources — temperatures will likely continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

The report from Copernicus included other observations of disturbing trends relating to the climate crisis, including:

• Each of the past 10 years being one of the top 10 warmest years on record;
• A new record being set in 2024 fo the hottest daily global average temperature ever measured, at 30.8 degrees Celsius on July 22;
• And carbon dioxide and methane levels increasing in 2024, to 422 parts per million (ppm) in particles within the atmosphere.

The 1.5 degrees threshold was chosen by the Paris Accords because it was viewed as a point where the impacts of the climate crisis would become more catastrophic. Indeed, 2024 was rife with extreme weather events and natural disasters, including flooding in Brazil, hurricane and tornado outbreaks in the U.S., deadly heatwaves in southeast Asia, and more.

With a 2 degrees increase, some changes will become irreversible, scientists believe.

The report comes as the effects of the climate crisis are being observed all over the world, with unprecedented flooding affecting parts of the Middle East, a polar vortex hitting parts of North America, bushfires and heatwaves affecting Australia, and wildfires bearing down on southern California, in part due to an atypical winter drought.

The wildfires in California are among the worst the state has ever seen. Fifteen of the 20 most destructive wildfires in the state have occurred over the past decade — but those figures don’t include the wildfires currently hitting the Los Angeles area, which will undoubtedly be added to that list once the full extent of their destruction is recorded.

Still, far right political figures continue to ignore or downplay the climate crisis — including president-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who is set to advise Trump on spending cuts that could include funds set aside for preventing and responding to natural disasters.

Environmental experts maintain that such downplaying is detrimental to the planet, and countries must decrease fossil fuel use to truly address the climate crisis.

“There is no doubt about the hand-in-hand connection between our obsession with fossil fuel burning — which goes back, you know, for 200 years now — and the alterations in the climate in terms of the buildup of heat-trapping CO2 and methane,” John Vaillant, journalist and author of “Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World,” said in an interview with Democracy Now! about the California wildfires this week.

“This kind of blind — frankly, suicidal — loyalty to the status quo of keeping fossil fuels preeminent in our energy system is creating an increasingly difficult situation and unlivable situation,” Vaillant added.