In January, we said that 2023 was the warmest in recorded history, and soon we will probably say the same about the slowly ending year. According to the World Meteorological Organization, everything indicates that another record will be broken. Experts emphasize that our planet has not been this warm for over a hundred thousand years. The trend of increasing global temperature can be seen in the visualization shown by NASA.
The year 2024 is on track to become the warmest on record, with Earth's average global temperature expected to be higher than last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized, such conclusions can be drawn almost two months before the end of the year.
– Climate catastrophe is our reality and we cannot keep up. Humanity is setting the planet on fire and paying the price for it, said the UN chief.
The organization analyzed the average temperature on the planet from January to September this year ahead of the upcoming COP29 climate conference. The summit will be held on November 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
In 2023, the average global air temperature was 14.98 Celsius, breaking the record from seven years ago. Additionally, last year was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900), and for the first time in history, the average daily temperature exceeded the average for that period by one degree every day of the year. At the end of October, the WMO announced that Last year, greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global temperatures to rise, reached record levels.
NASA published a visualization showing air temperature anomalies on Earth in the years 1880-2023. The red color shows the temperature higher than average, the blue color – lower, and the areas where the temperature did not deviate from the average are marked in white. Over the past 143 years, the greatest increases have been in the Northern Hemisphere, South America and parts of Antarctica. The temperature is rising at the fastest rate since the beginning of this century.
Visualization showing the increase in average temperature on Earth in the years 1880-2023Reuters/NASA's Scientific Visualizatio
According to early, less precise climate data obtained from ice cores and tree rings, our planet has not been this warm for 120,000 years.
Main photo source: Reuters/NASA's Scientific Visualizatio