Brussels: The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced on Thursday that 2024 is “virtually certain” to surpass 2023 as the hottest year ever recorded. This statement comes just ahead of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where world leaders will address urgent climate action. However, expectations for significant commitments at the summit have been tempered by Donald Trump’s recent victory in the U.S. presidential election.
C3S data reveals that global temperatures from January to October were exceptionally high, making it likely that 2024 will be the warmest year on record unless global temperatures drastically decrease over the remainder of the year. C3S Director Carlo Buontempo emphasized the undeniable role of climate change, stating, “The climate is warming, generally. It’s warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken.”
In addition, 2024 is expected to be the first year with average global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (1850–1900), a threshold set to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change. According to the Paris Agreement of 2015, countries agreed to limit warming to 1.5°C, though C3S now anticipates that the global average could exceed this target as early as 2030. Climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne from ETH Zurich expressed concern, calling for accelerated action at COP29 to reduce carbon emissions. “The limits that were set in the Paris Agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,” she noted.
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The impacts of each fraction of a degree increase are already visible through intensified extreme weather events. October 2024 witnessed deadly flash floods in Spain, record-breaking wildfires in Peru, and devastating flooding in Bangladesh, where rice crops were ruined, exacerbating food insecurity. The U.S. also saw heightened hurricane activity, as evidenced by Hurricane Milton, which was worsened by climate change.
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C3S, which compiles records from 1940 onward and verifies them with earlier data extending to 1850, underscores the urgent need for transformative climate action to curb these growing extremes.
