2024 is probably the hottest year in history

Even if the year as a whole ends up about 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850 to 1900), the Paris target of 1.5 degrees to curb the climate crisis will not be considered missed. To do this, we look at longer-term average values, the EU climate change agency Copernicus reported on Monday.

Copernicus relies on a dataset based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world. The American climate agency NOAA also recently believed that 2024 would be a record year.

Second warmest November in history
As Copernicus further announced, November 2024 was the second warmest November on Earth. The global surface temperature averaged 14.1 degrees Celsius.

“With Copernicus data from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with reasonable certainty that 2024 will be the hottest year on record (…),” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. together . Ambitious climate protection measures are more urgent than ever.

Man-made greenhouse gases are considered the main reason for the temperature increase. In addition, there have also been other effects lately: the currently increased activity of the sun, the weather phenomenon El Niño, volcanic activity and less particulate matter above the oceans.

Explosive: There are fewer clouds now
Moreover, German researchers have just concluded that there are fewer clouds at low altitudes that cool the climate. This explains the temperature increase from 2022 to 2023 and 2024. The reasons for this are not yet completely clear, but could be diverse. Global warming itself may be one of the reasons for the lower cloud cover.

According to Copernicus, when looking at different parts of the world for November, a differentiated picture emerges: the average temperature in mainland Europe was 5.14 degrees Celsius. This means that November 2024 is not one of the ten warmest November months in Europe.

South-eastern Europe 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, the central and eastern US, most of Mexico, Morocco, northwest Africa, China, Pakistan, most of Siberia and Australia. However, temperatures were most significantly below average in the western United States, parts of North Africa, far eastern Russia and most of Antarctica.

Precipitation amounts below to above average
Copernicus also addressed global rainfall in November 2024: it will occur in large parts of Western and Central Europe, in the southwestern US, in Mexico, Chile and Brazil, in the Horn of Africa, in parts of Central -Asia, southeastern China and southern Africa below average. Droughts have also occurred in several regions of North and South America.

However, above-average rainfall was recorded in western Iceland, southern Britain, northern Scandinavia, the southern Balkans and Greece, as well as eastern Spain and large parts of Eastern Europe. It was also too wet in many parts of the US, in large parts of Australia and South America, in Central Asia and in the easternmost part of China. In the western Pacific, typhoons also caused heavy rainfall and damage, especially in the Philippines.

Arctic sea ice has the third lowest monthly extent
According to Copernicus, Arctic sea ice reached its third lowest monthly extent in November 2024 and was nine percent below average.

In Antarctica, 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 deviations from 2023 and 2024,” the statement said.