The Earth will notch its hottest year on record in 2024, breaking the previous peak set only last year, NOAA said Thursday.
The new high-temperature mark is the latest signal that human-driven climate change is worsening, and it comes as global sea ice cover fell to its second-lowest level, another harbinger of a warming planet.
Though the full-year data was not yet fully complete, NOAA said 2024 has a greater than 99 percent chance of beating last year’s mark, which had been the highest since record keeping began in 1850. Globally, temperatures were 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.28 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average from January through November. Every continent experienced its warmest year on record — except Asia, which recorded its second-warmest year.
NOAA’s findings are an ominous sign for global efforts to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 C since the Industrial Revolution, a goal set out in the Paris climate agreement. The agency’s observations come on the heels of forecasts from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that indicated the world surpassed that temperature mark this year, though doing so for one year is less severe than remaining above it for a sustained, multidecade climatic scale.
