The global mean temperature for the past year was the highest ever recorded and January 2024 was the warmest on record, new data shows.
The global mean temperature over the past year was also 0.64°C higher than the average between 1991 to 2020 and 1.52°C above the pre-industrial average between 1850 to 1900, the bulletin from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.
"[The year] 2024 starts with another record-breaking month—not only is it the warmest January on record but we have also just experienced a 12-month period of more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period. Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to stop global temperatures increasing," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the C3S said in a summary of the findings.
In January, there was a surface air temperature of 13.14°C, which is 0.12°C higher than the previous record set for January in 2020.
The globe has seen other startling temperatures recently. The year 2023 was full of record temperatures. Last month, data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed that the average global temperature in 2023 was 1.46 degrees C (2.6 F), the 10th year in a row that temperatures demonstrated a degree rise.
According to the new bulletin, while the temperature was lower in January than the last half of 2023, it was higher than the months before July.
The central U.S. saw warmer than usual temperatures in January, as did western Canada.
The globe is seeing an El Niño year in 2024. It is the warmer counterpart to La Niña generated by a warm ocean surface. During an El Niño winter, the Pacific jet stream moves south and spreads farther east. That means warmer winters and extra precipitation are expected for parts of the central U.S, which could explain the record high temperatures in January.
Although El Niño did weaken in the Pacific for a moment, there were still high temperatures in marine air, the bulletin reported.
Experts have expressed concern over the rising temperatures.
"It is a significant milestone to see the global mean temperature for a 12-month period exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures for the first time," Matt Patterson, postdoctoral research assistant in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, said in response to the findings.
"Warm ocean temperatures related to the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific will have contributed to the warm global temperatures, but the primary cause is increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels."
Climate change likely has a hand in the surge of temperatures across the globe.
"It's not the case that we are all safe for a temperature rise of 1.4C and doomed at 1.6C," Brian Hoskins, chair of the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, added in a statement.
"The first time that a 12-month average temperature rise has exceeded 1.5C, the Paris aspirational 1.5C upper bound, is not a signal that it has already been breached as it applies to an average of a decade or more. Having said that, it is a stark warning of the urgency for the action that is required to limit climate change at anything like the Paris targets."
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Robyn White is a Newsweek Nature Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on wildlife, science and the ... Read more
