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Context:

Climate change contributed to 41 additional days of dangerous heat in 2024 posing severe risks to human health and ecosystems.

Details: 

The year 2024 saw record temperatures and extreme weather events marking a decade of unprecedented warmth. The UN and WMO warn of the worsening effects of climate change and urge immediate action to prevent further environmental degradation.

Extreme climate events in 2024

• The United Nations has singled out 2024 as a year of record heat and unprecedented climate events.
• Extreme weather including record rainfall, flooding and devastating loss of life was observed around the world and affected all continents.
• WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo highlighted the increasing frequency and severity of these events and showed the tangible impacts of climate change.

Cue the heat and rising emissions

• 2024 is set to be the warmest year on record continuing a decade-long trend of unprecedented global warmth.
• The World Meteorological Organization reported an average January-September surface air temperature of 54 °C above pre-Industrial Revolution (1850–1900) levels.
• Greenhouse gas emissions have reached new highs further amplifying global warming and blocking future heat impacts.

Call to Action: Avoiding Climate Collapse

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described the current situation as a "climate collapse in real time".
• In his New Year's address, he called for immediate global action to reverse the trajectory and warned of a "road to destruction".
• The WMO plans to issue a comprehensive global temperature report for 2024 in January, followed by a full "State of the Global Climate 2024" report in March.

About the 2024 State of the Climate Report

• This was published by the World Meteorological Organization during the United National Climate Conference (COP29) in Baku.

The most important:

• 2024 is on track to become the warmest year on record after a long streak of unusually high monthly average global temperatures.
• From January to September this year, the global average temperature was 1.54 degrees above pre-industrial levels, with climate warming boosted by El Niño weather.
  • • The years 2015-2024 will be the warmest decade on record, adding that the rate of ocean warming has shown a particularly strong increase in the last two decades and the planet's seas will continue to warm irreversibly.
    • 2023 has already seen the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions on record, and real-time data suggests they will continue to rise in 2024.
    • The volume of heat-trapping carbon dioxide increased by 51% between 1750 and 2023.
    • This is clearly visible in the world's oceans, which absorb about 90% of excess heat from global warming. Record heat was already reached in 2023, and preliminary data for 2024 show a continuation of this trend.
    • At the same time, glaciers around the world are losing ice at an accelerating rate. In 2023 alone, the glaciers retreated faster than at any other point since they began to be recorded 70 years ago, losing the equivalent of five times the volume of water held in the Dead Sea.
• The loss is attributed to extreme melting in North America and Europe.
  • • The rapid melting of glaciers contributes to rising sea levels. Between 2014 and 2023, global average sea level rose at a rate of 4.77 mm per year, more than double the rate between 1993 and 2002.

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