2024 likely to be hottest year on record, first to exceed Paris agreement threshold

This year will likely be the warmest ever recorded, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a statement Thursday.

In its announcement, Copernicus noted that last month was itself the second-warmest October ever recorded, behind only 2023's.

It was also the 15^th of the last 16 months in which global average surface air temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the warming ceiling agreed upon in the Paris Climate Agreement. In the case of October 2024, the average was 1.65 degrees above the pre-industrial average.

Over the 12 months ending in October, Copernicus found, the average temperature was 1.62 degrees above that average and 0.62 degrees above the one from 1991-2020. The first 10 months of the year were an average of 0.71 degrees over the previous three decades and 0.16 degrees over the first 10 months of 2023, making it “virtually certain” this year will be the hottest on record unless the average temperature anomaly drops to nearly zero for the remaining two months.

"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,” Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said in a statement. “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."

The 2023 average was 1.48 degrees above the pre-industrial average, all but guaranteeing this year will be more than 1.5 degrees above the average, according to Copernicus.

In his first term, President-elect Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris agreement, with President Biden rejoining it in January 2021.

When he returns to the White House in January, Trump, who has falsely claimed climate change is a “hoax” and vowed to dramatically increase fossil fuel production, is likely to exit the agreement again.