A report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial era.
With the addition of 2024, yet another record-hot year, the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest in nearly 200 years of record-keeping, the World Meteorological Organization reports.
“That’s never happened before,” said Chris Hewitt, the director of the W.M.O.’s climate services division. It marks the first time since record keeping began that all of the 10 hottest years have fallen within the most recent decade.
2024 was the single warmest year on record, surpassing even 2023’s wide lead over other recent years. The planet’s surface was approximately 1.55 degrees Celsius warmer than its average during a reference period that approximates the preindustrial era, from 1850-1900.
The annual report from the W.M.O., a United Nations agency, includes input from dozens of experts and institutions from around the world and sheds further light on the record-breaking heat of 2024 and places it in the context of Earth’s long-term warming from climate change.
The extra energy in the atmosphere and the oceans helped fuel climate-related disasters around the globe. Extreme weather events like drought, storms and wildfires displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, the report says.
Atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases released from fossil fuel combustion continue to rise. In 2024, the concentration of carbon dioxide hit amounts unseen in at least two million years, according to the report.
