Scientists warn efforts to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5°C will fail as data confirms 2024 was the hottest year in human history
By James Dinneen and Madeleine Cuff
10 January 2025 Last updated 10 January 2025
The sun sets on a hot day in London in July 2024
Guy Corbishley/Alamy
Hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels have been all but extinguished after new data confirmed 2024 was the first calendar year to see average temperatures breach that critical threshold.
Last year was the hottest ever recorded in human history, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared on 10 January, in the latest stark warning that humanity is pushing Earth’s climate into uncharted territory.
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The average global temperature for the year exceeded 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline for the first time, the agency also confirmed, temporarily breaching the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.
The WMO’s assessment is calculated using the average global temperature across six datasets, with the period of 1850 to 1900 used to provide a pre-industrial baseline. Temperature datasets collected by various agencies and institutions around the world vary slightly, mainly due to differences in how ocean temperatures have been measured and analysed over the decades. Some of those datasets come in just below the 1.5°C mark, but others are well above.
The UK’s Met Office weather service puts 2024’s average temperature at 1.53°C above pre-industrial levels, with a margin of error of 0.08°C. That is 0.07°C above 2023, the previous warmest year on record. Meanwhile, the European Union’s climate change service Copernicus has 2024 temperatures at 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, 0.12°C above 2023’s record.