Year 2024 exceeds 1.5°C threshold, becomes hottest year, says C3S report
- With this, 2024 has overtaken 2023 as the warmest year ever recorded.
The year 2024 was the hottest globally, marking the first time average global temperatures surpassed the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on Friday.
The average annual global temperature last year was 1.6°C higher than pre-industrial times (average of the 1850-1900 period), it said. With this, 2024 has overtaken 2023 as the warmest year ever recorded. The year 2023 was recorded to be 1.45°C warmer than pre-industrial times, driven by record-high greenhouse gas emissions.
India significantly less warmer
Earlier this month, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said 2024 was the warmest for India as well though not to the extent of breaching the 1.5°C threshold.
Temperature records over India do not extend to the pre-industrial times, and even otherwise, the warming over the Indian land area is significantly less than the global average.
Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane reached new highs, with carbon dioxide (CO2) at 422 ppm or parts per million and methane at 1,897 ppb or parts per billion, further exacerbating the climate crisis.
The C3S report revealed that 2024 was the hottest year on record for all continental regions, excluding Antarctica and Australasia. It also highlighted significant warming in major oceanic regions, including the North Atlantic, Indian, and western Pacific Oceans.
Each of the past 10 years (2015-2024) ranks among the warmest on record. Notably, monthly temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for 11 months in 2024, the report said.
This ‘extraordinary’ surge in temperature has intensified concerns over the accelerating threat of climate change.
“The year-on-year increase in average global temperature has serious implications for developing economies reeling with frequent climate disasters. This, coupled with the failure of COP29 to deliver meaningful finance, only implies that developing economies will have to allocate more funds to deal with climate impacts and disasters in future. Mitigation ambition of the developing world would be hit hard, unless fast and meaningful action happens on the carbon markets front,” said Vaibhav Chaturvedi, senior fellow Council of Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
The 1.5°C-mark is a crucial threshold mentioned in the 2015 Paris Agreement which calls upon the world to restrict the rise in global temperatures to “well below 2°C” from pre-industrial levels while “pursuing efforts” to keep this within 1.5 degree Celsius. The Paris Agreement says that pursuing the 1.5°C target “would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.
The 2024 breach, however, does not necessarily mean that the 1.5°C goal is over. The 1.5°C or 2°C targets are meant to be seen in the context of long-term temperature trends and not in year-to-year, or month-to-month, temperature variations. For example, monthly average temperatures have crossed the 1.5°C mark several times during the last two years. Daily average temperatures have breached this mark hundreds of times.
From the climate change perspective, however, the 1.5°C mark will be considered to have been breached only if the averages over a decade or two remain above the thresholds.
“A single year with temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels does not mean we’ve reached 1.5°C of global warming. However, it does mean we are getting dangerously close,” Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College, London, said in a statement.
Climate change is worsening storms and torrential rainfall because a hotter atmosphere can hold more water, leading to intense downpours. The amount of water vapour in the planet's atmosphere reached a record high in 2024.
UN weather experts from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have also confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the hottest year on record, at 1.55 degrees Celsius (C) above pre-industrial temperatures. The Paris Agreement is “not yet dead but in grave danger”, the WMO maintained, 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 recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet.”
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 1.5°C—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,” Guterres said. “It means we need to fight even harder to get on track. Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025,” he said. “There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act—now.”
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Business NewsIndustryYear 2024 exceeds 1.5°C threshold, becomes hottest year, says C3S report
First Published:10 Jan 2025, 10:51 PM IST
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