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The current year is heading for a new temperature record: 2024 will almost certainly be the warmest year globally since records began. It is also likely to be the first year in which the average temperature is more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average, as reported by the EU climate change service Copernicus.
Copernicus relies on a data set based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, airplanes and weather stations worldwide. The US climate agency NOAA recently also believed 2024 would likely be a record year.
Even if the year ends up being around 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850 to 1900), the Paris 1.5-degree target for containing the climate crisis is not yet considered to have been missed. Instead, we are looking at longer-term average values.
Second warmest November
Copernicus also reported that November 2024 was the second warmest November worldwide. The global surface temperature averaged 14.1 degrees Celsius.
“With Copernicus data from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with near certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record (…),” Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, summarizes the situation in the press release. Ambitious climate protection measures are more urgent than ever.
Greenhouse gases are the main cause
Man-made greenhouse gases are considered to be the main reason for the rise in temperatures. However, other effects have also occurred recently: increased sun activity, the “El Niño” weather phenomenon, volcanic activity, and less particulate matter over the oceans.
German researchers have also just concluded that there are fewer clouds at low altitudes to cool the Earth. This explains the jump in temperature from 2022 to 2023 and 2024. The causes behind this are unclear but could be manifold. It is possible that global warming itself is one of the reasons for the lower cloud cover.
According to Copernicus, a look at different regions of the world reveals a differentiated picture for November: the average temperature over mainland Europe was 5.14 degrees Celsius. This means that November 2024 was not one of Europe’s ten warmest November months.
Southeastern Europe is below average
Overall, temperatures were above average in northern Russia and northeastern and southwestern Europe but below average in southeastern Europe.
Outside Europe, November 2024 was warmer than average in eastern Canada, central and eastern USA, most of Mexico, Morocco, northwest Africa, China, Pakistan, most of Siberia, and Australia. By contrast, temperatures were significantly below average in the west of the USA, in parts of North Africa, in the far east of Russia, and in most of Antarctica.
Rainfall ranges from below to above-average
Copernicus also examined global precipitation in November 2024: It had been below average in large parts of western and central Europe, the southwest of the USA, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil, the Horn of Africa, parts of Central Asia, south-eastern China, and southern Africa. Droughts also occurred in several regions of North and South America.
In contrast, above-average precipitation was recorded in western Iceland, southern Great Britain, northern Scandinavia, the southern Balkans and Greece, as well as in eastern Spain and large parts of eastern Europe. It was also too wet in many regions of the USA, in large parts of Australia and South America, Central Asia, and the easternmost part of China. In the western Pacific, typhoons caused heavy rainfall and damage, particularly in the Philippines.
Arctic sea ice with the third-lowest extent
According to Copernicus, Arctic sea ice reached its third-lowest monthly extent in November 2024 and was nine percent below average. In the Antarctic, the sea ice extent reached its lowest monthly value and was ten percent below average. “This slightly exceeded the values of 2016 and 2023 and continued a series of historically large negative anomalies from 2023 and 2024,” the press release states.
- source: orf.at/picture: pixabay.com
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