2024 is set to become the world’s hottest on record, EU scientists say

• The COP29 summit aims to increase funding for climate change.
• Climate change is fueling extreme weather, says C3S director.
• The world is expected to exceed the Paris Agreement target by 2030.
  

This year is “almost certain” to eclipse 2023 as the world’s warmest since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

The figures were released ahead of next week’s COP29 UN 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 United States presidential election lowered expectations for the talks.

C3S said that from January to October, the average global temperature was so high that 2024 was certain to be the world’s warmest year – unless the temperature anomaly for the rest of the year fell to almost zero.

“The fundamental cause of this year’s record is climate change,” said C3S Director Carlo Buontempo. Reuters.

“The climate is warming, in general. It’s warming on all continents, in all ocean basins. So we’re bound to see these records broken,” he said.

Scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet will be more than 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas are the main cause of global warming.

Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at the public research university ETH Zurich, said she was not surprised by the milestone and urged governments at COP29 to agree stronger action to wean their economies off CO2-emitting fossil fuels.

“The limits set in the Paris agreement are starting to break down given the very slow pace of climate action around the world,” Seneviratne said.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5°C, to avoid its worst consequences.

The world has not breached this target – which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5°C over decades – but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris target around 2030.

“They’re basically in the corner now,” Buontempo said.

Every fraction of an increase in temperature fuels extreme weather.

In October, devastating flash floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record fires ravaged Peru and floods in Bangladesh destroyed more than 1 million tons of rice, sending food prices skyrocketing. In the US, Hurricane Milton was also exacerbated by human-caused climate change.

C3S records date back to 1940, which are cross-referenced with global temperature records dating back to 1850.