Well, well... this is not a surprise. 2024 was the hottest year since temperature records began in 1850. And the second hottest year on record was 2023.
Unfortunately, this also means that we exceeded the goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees C that was agreed to at the Paris Agreement in 2016. Remember that agreement? The goal was to keep temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures (as defined by the 1850 - 1900 average). But last year was 1.6 degrees C over pre-industrial levels.
It's been 48 years since the last time the world had a cooler year than average year. You can thank rising greenhouse emissions for the overall upward trend in heat.
Sooo....what will 2025 be like? Stay tuned.
Excerpts from Ars Technica: Everyone agrees: 2024 the hottest year since the thermometer was invented
Over the last 24 hours or so, the major organizations that keep track of global temperatures have released figures for 2024, and all of them agree: 2024 was the warmest year yet recorded, joining 2023 as an unusual outlier in terms of how rapidly things heated up. At least two of the organizations, the European Union's Copernicus and Berkeley Earth, place the year at about 1.6° C above pre-industrial temperatures, marking the first time that the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5° has been exceeded.
2023 had set a temperature record largely due to a switch to El Niño conditions midway through the year, which made the second half of the year exceptionally hot. It takes some time for that heat to make its way from the ocean into the atmosphere, so the streak of warm months continued into 2024, even as the Pacific switched into its cooler La Niña mode.
While El Niños are regular events, this one had an outsized impact because it was accompanied by unusually warm temperatures outside the Pacific, including record high temperatures in the Atlantic and unusual warmth in the Indian Ocean. Land temperatures reflect this widespread warmth, with elevated temperatures on all continents. Berkeley Earth estimates that 104 countries registered 2024 as the warmest on record, meaning 3.3 billion people felt the hottest average temperatures they had ever experienced.
Describing the details of 2024, however, doesn't really capture just how exceptional the warmth of the last two years has been. Starting in around 1970, there's been a roughly linear increase in temperature driven by greenhouse gas emissions, despite many individual years that were warmer or cooler than the trend.
From National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): 2024 was the world’s warmest year on record
It’s official: 2024 was the planet’s warmest year on record, according to an analysis by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
Along with historic heat, Antarctic sea ice coverage dropped to its second-lowest extent (coverage) on record. [This article has nice graphs, pictures.]