By Muhammad Amaan
The World Meteorological Organisation on Friday confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, at 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
In November, the WMO noted that 2024 was on track to be the warmest year on record due to an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures.
The WMO said between January and September 2024, the global average temperature rose to 1.54°C above the pre-industrial level.
It added that the year also witnessed extreme weather and climate events, leading to massive economic and human losses.
However, 2023 was also reported to be the warmest year in global temperature data records as far back as 1850 since it was closer to reaching the 1.5°C limit.
But the 2024 then became the hottest year on record since it surpassed the 1.5°C limit.
The 1.5℃ marker is significant because it was a key goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to ensure that global temperature change does not rise more than this above pre-industrial levels while striving to hold the overall increase to well below 2℃.
The target was also aimed at limiting human-caused climate change, consequently reducing the risk of storms, wildfires and longer heatwaves if it exceeds the target.
WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said “We saw extraordinary land, sea surface temperatures, extraordinary ocean heat accompanied by very extreme weather affecting many countries around the world, destroying lives, livelihoods, hopes and dreams. We saw many climate change impacts retreating sea ice glaciers. It was an extraordinary year.”
Four of the six international datasets crunched by WMO indicated a higher than 1.5℃ global average increase for the whole of last year but two did not.
Seeing that 2024 surpassed the 1.5°C target, the WMO maintained that the Paris Agreement is “not yet dead but in grave danger,” explaining that the accord’s long-term temperature goals are measured over decades, rather than individual years.
However, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo insisted that “climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series.
“It is essential to recognise that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet.”
Amid still raging deadly wildfires in Los Angeles that weather experts including the WMO insist have been exacerbated by climate change, with more days of dry, warm, windy weather on top of rains which boosted vegetation growth, the UN agency said that 2024 capped a decade-long “extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures.”
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the WMO’s findings as further proof of global warming and urged all governments to deliver new national climate action plans this year to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5C and support the most vulnerable deal with devastating climate impacts.
“Individual years pushing past the 1.5℃ limit does not mean the long-term goal is shot. It means we need to fight even harder to get on track. Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025.
“There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now,” he said.
The datasets used by WMO are from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the Japan Meteorological Agency, NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, HadCRUT, and Berkeley Earth.
Highlighting a separate scientific study on ocean warming, WMO said that it had played a key role in last year’s record high temperatures.
“The ocean is the warmest it has ever been as recorded by humans, not only at the surface but also for the upper 2,000 metres,” the UN agency said, citing the findings of the international study spanning seven countries and published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
WMO noted that about 90 per cent of the excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, “making ocean heat content a critical indicator of climate change.”
To put the study’s findings into perspective, it explained that from 2023 to 2024, the upper 2,000 metres of ocean became warmer by 16 zettajoules (1,021 Joules), which is about 140 times the world’s total electricity output.
