Europe’s climate service has confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures surpassing the critical 1.5C threshold above pre-industrial levels for the first time.
This milestone highlights the urgent need for stronger measures to protect people from the growing impacts of climate change.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported on Friday that global temperatures in 2024 reached 1.6C above pre-industrial averages. This marks a worrying continuation of the trend that has seen each year in the past decade among the warmest on record.
The findings came as wildfires, worsened by drought conditions, ravaged parts of Los Angeles, killing at least 10 people, forcing widespread evacuations, and creating chaos in Hollywood.
C3S director Carlo Buontempo warned that rising temperatures are leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms, and heavy rainfall.
“Our traditional system to cope with and respond to extreme climate events is being tested to the limits,” he said, adding that adaptation to these new realities is now a necessity, not a choice.
Over the past two years, global temperatures have averaged 1.54C above pre-industrial levels, exceeding the target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Although this does not yet mean the goal has been entirely lost, Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, cautioned that the world is dangerously close to exceeding this limit.
The increased frequency of extreme weather events in 2024 – including deadly floods in Spain, hurricanes in the US, and droughts in South America – is attributed to climate change, which has intensified 26 of the 29 events studied by the World Weather Attribution and Climate Central projects.
The scale of economic damage is also rising. Munich Re, the world’s largest insurer, reported that natural disasters caused an estimated $140 billion in insured losses in 2024, a sharp increase from the previous year.
With greenhouse gas levels at an all-time high, the need for urgent global action to reduce emissions and improve adaptation strategies is clearer than ever.
