2024 will be the hottest year on record and the first year above 1.5C, scientists confirm

This November was the second warmest on record, confirming expectations that 2024 will be the hottest year since records began.

Global temperatures were on average 14.10C - 0.73C above the 1991 to 2020 average for November, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Overall, November 2024 was 1.62C above pre-industrial levels. This makes it the 16th month out of the last 17 where global average temperatures have exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times.

“With Copernicus data in from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with virtual certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first calendar year above 1.5°C,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

“This does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.”

So far this year, from January to November, global average temperatures have been 0.72C above the 1991 to 2020 average. This is the highest on record for this period and 0.14C warmer than the same period in 2023.

Our planet is becoming dangerously overheated

At this point C3S is effectively certain - even without temperatures from December - that 2024 is going to be the warmest on record. Data shows that it will almost certainly be more than 1.5C higher than pre-industrial levels too.

The record was all but confirmed back in October when C3S pointed out that global average temperatures would have to drop to almost zero degrees Celsius during the last two months of the year for 2024 not to be the hottest.

Last month at the COP29 summit in Baku, a report from World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) scientists warned that the world was becoming dangerously overheated. They said that global temperatures have already risen by 1.3C compared to the pre-industrial average.

The world is now experiencing unprecedented sea surface temperatures, ice cap melting, droughts, deadly storms and severe flooding.

"It's not a surprise. And we have to recognise that scientists have been marking this for many years - more than 30 years in fact - and that what is a surprise is the slowness to react," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo told the UN climate conference.