2024 is the hottest year on record, EU scientists say

This year will be the world's warmest since records began, with extraordinarily high temperatures expected to persist into at least the first few months of 2025, EU scientists said on Monday.

The data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) comes two weeks after UN climate talks yielded a $300bn (R5.3-trillion) deal to tackle climate change, a package poorer countries blasted as insufficient to cover the soaring cost of climate-related disasters.

C3S said data from January to November had confirmed 2024 is certain to be the hottest year on record, and the first in which average global temperatures exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period.

The previous hottest year on record was 2023.

Extreme weather has swept around the world this year, with severe drought hitting Italy and South America, fatal floods in Nepal, Sudan and Europe, heatwaves in Mexico, Mali and Saudi Arabia that killed thousands and disastrous cyclones in the US and the Philippines.

Scientific studies have confirmed the fingerprints of human-caused climate change on all of the disasters.

Last month ranked as the second-warmest November on record after November 2023.

“We're in near-record-high territory for global temperatures, and that's likely to stay at least for the next few months,” Copernicus climate researcher Julien Nicolas told Reuters.

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.

Cutting emissions to net zero, as many governments have pledged to eventually do, will stop global warming from getting worse. Yet despite the green pledges, global CO² emissions are set to hit a record high this year.

Scientists are also monitoring whether the La Nina weather pattern, which involves the cooling of ocean surface temperatures, could form in 2025.

That could briefly cool global temperatures, though it would not halt the long-term underlying trend of warming caused by emissions. The world is in neutral conditions, after El Nino, La Nina's hotter counterpart, ended earlier this year.

“While 2025 might be slightly cooler than 2024, if a La Nina event develops, this does not mean temperatures will be 'safe' or 'normal',” said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at Imperial College London.

“We will experience high temperatures, resulting in dangerous heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones.”

C3S records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.

Reuters