2024 on track to be warmest year on record as world crosses dangerous threshold

This year is on track to be the and the first above 1.5C, warn scientists.

The prognosis, from the ’s space programme, comes a day after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical polluter of planet-heating gas, chose to make president. Trump has described climate change as a “hoax” and promised to roll back policies to clean up the economy.

The report, based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations, found 2024 is likely to be the first year more than 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, a level of warming that has alarmed scientists. “This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming climate change conference,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

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It said that last month was the second-warmest October on record, behind only October 2023, with temperatures 1.65C greater than pre-industrial levels. It was the 15th month in the past 16 to be higher than the 1.5C mark.

World leaders promised to stop the planet from heating 1.5C by the end of the century but are on track to heat it by roughly double that. Scientists say a single year above the threshold does not mean they have missed the target, as temperature rise is measured over decades rather than years, but warn that it will force more people and ecosystems to the brink of survival.

“Our civilisation never had to cope with a climate as warm as the current one,” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus. “This inevitably pushes our ability to respond to extreme events – and adapt to a warmer – to the absolute limit.”

The Copernicus findings are based on billions of weather measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations. Separately, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also confirmed that this year is expected to be the warmest.

Its global temperature analysis covers January to September 2024 and is based on six international datasets to provide a consolidated temperature assessment. WMO provided the information to UN Secretary-General António Guterres ahead of the UN Climate Change conference, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, which starts on Monday.

“Today, the World Meteorological Organization and partners tell us that 2024 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded – almost two months before it ends,” said Mr Guterres. “Humanity’s torching the planet and paying the price.”

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