Earth will experience its warmest year on record in 2024, breaking last year’s previous peak, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
The new high temperature mark is the latest signal that human-induced climate change is worsening, and comes as global sea ice cover has fallen to its second lowest level, another harbinger of a warming planet.
Although the full year’s data was not yet fully complete, NOAA said 2024 has a better than 99 percent chance of surpassing last year’s milestone, which was the highest since records began in 1850. Globally, the temperatures 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.28 degrees Celsius). Celsius) above the 20th century average from January to November. Every continent experienced its warmest year on record – except Asia, which recorded the second warmest year.
NOAA’s findings are an ominous sign for global efforts to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, a goal set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The agency’s observations follow forecasts from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which indicated that the world has exceeded this temperature level this year, although less severely over a year than over a sustained, decades-long climate scale above to stay.
President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next month and has pledged to reverse climate policies enacted under President Joe Biden. He has also pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris accord, which has served as the basis for international action to tackle rising temperatures that are fueling worsening droughts, heat waves, wildfires and more powerful storms.
Biden has made fighting climate a core priority for his administration, including accelerating the deployment of clean energy and helping communities adapt to the impacts of a warming planet. But many of his policies, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest-ever U.S. investment in the fight against climate change, are expected to be targeted by Republicans, who will control the White House and both chambers of Congress next year.
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine said the 2024 temperature record is a clear sign that countries are failing to halt climate change, which is endangering people’s lives, endangering food security and increases the footprint of tropical diseases.
“However, it is possible that 2024 will be the coolest year we have ever seen in our lifetimes,” she said at the American Geophysical Union conference in Washington. “So when I talk about that statistic or that potential, people notice it because of the heat-related health impacts that we’ve seen in the United States and around the world.”
NOAA’s reported Tuesday that the Arctic tundra has shifted from a carbon sink — which draws greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and stores them — to an emitter of greenhouse gases as rapid warming, wildfires and thawing of permafrost release trapped organic matter.
