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This year is ‘virtually certain’ to eclipse 2023 as the world’s warmest since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.
The data was released on the sidelines of the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will try to agree a huge increase in funding to tackle climate change. Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has dampened expectations for the talks.
C3S said that from January to October, the average global temperature had been so high that 2024 was sure to be the world’s hottest year – unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged to near-zero.
“The fundamental, underpinning cause of this year’s record is climate change,” C3S Director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.
“The climate is warming, generally. It’s warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken,” he said.
The scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet is more than 1.5C hotter than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are the main cause of global warming.
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