2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists express

2024 was the hottest year on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Friday, and the first in which temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times - a threshold that may lead to more severe climate disasters.

The latest bleak assessment of the state of climate change comes as the death toll from wildfires raging in California climbs at the start of the new year.

The WMO and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said climate change was pushing the planet's temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans.

"Today’s assessment from the World Meteorological Organization is clear: Global heating is a cold, hard fact," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "There's still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now."

The planet's average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, C3S said. The last 10 years have all been in the top 10 hottest years on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

"The trajectory is just incredible," C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, noting that every month in 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest for that month since records began.

Reuters