European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has announced that 2024 is projected to be the warmest year on record.
Gatekeepers News reports that in a report published on Thursday, C3S reported that the average global temperature anomaly for the first ten months of 2024 (January to October) reached 0.71°C, which is an increase of 0.16°C compared to the same period in 2023.
To avoid 2024 being classified as the warmest year, the average temperature anomaly for the remaining months would need to drop to nearly zero, according to C3S.
October 2024 marked the second-warmest October globally, following October 2023, with an average surface air temperature of 15.25°C, which is 0.80°C above the October average from 1991 to 2020.
Also, the average sea surface temperature (SST) for October 2024 was recorded at 20.68°C, making it the second-highest value ever recorded for the month and just 0.10°C below the SST of October 2023.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, emphasised that the new temperature records should motivate an increase in climate action at the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP29).
“After 10 months of 2024, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first year of more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, according to the ERA5 dataset,” Burgess said.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29.”
