According to the European climate agency Copernicus, 2024 is set to end as the warmest year on record and the first year with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A yearly review report by two groups of climate scientists — World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central — said the world saw an average of 41 more days of dangerous heat in 2024.
Small island developing states were hit the hardest, with their people experiencing over 130 additional hot days.
The scientists identified 219 extreme weather events in 2024 and studied 29 of them. They found that climate change contributed to at least 3,700 deaths and displaced millions in 26 extreme weather events.
“It is likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens or hundreds of thousands,” the report said.
The floods in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad were the deadliest event studied by the group, with at least 2,000 people killed.
The study found that if global warming reached two degrees Celsius, which could happen as early as the 2040s or 2050s, these regions might face similar heavy rainfall events every year.
Friederike Otto, lead of WWA and senior lecturer in climate science at the Imperial College, London, said, “The impacts of fossil fuel warming have never been clearer or more devastating than in 2024. We are living in a dangerous new era.” “We know exactly what we need to do to stop things from getting worse — stop burning fossil fuels. The top resolution for 2025 must be transitioning away from fossil fuels, which will make the world a safer and more stable place,” he added.
The year 2024 is expected to end with a global average temperature at least 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus.
However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit specified in the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over a 20- or 30-year period.
That said, experts feel that the world is now entering a phase where temperatures will be consistently above this threshold.
The average global temperature has already risen by 1.3 degrees Celsius compared to the 1850-1900 average, driven by the rapid buildup of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change, says global emissions must peak by 2025 and reduce by 43% by 2030 and 57% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
However, according to the latest UN data, current policies will take global warming to around 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Even the full implementation of all Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) or national climate plans will likely lead to just a 5.9% emission reduction by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, according to the synthesis report of countries’ NDCs.
Fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — are the largest contributors to climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
However, the world is struggling to transition away from fossil fuels rapidly enough to prevent breaching the 1.5-degree Celsius goal due to a combination of political, economic, technological, and social challenges.
The transition to clean energy sources is particularly difficult for poor countries in the Global South due to dependence on fossil fuels for jobs and cheap energy, lack of funding and technology, weak power grids, and limited expertise.
