This year is on track to be the hottest on record, the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said as it issued a “red alert” over climate change.
The WMO said the global average temperature for January to September 2024 was 1.54C above pre-industrial levels, based on analysis from six global datasets, boosted by a warming El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific.
This year is set to outstrip even the record heat of 2023, the agency said.
Although this breaches a key threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures to which countries have committed to limit global warming to avoid its worst impacts, the WMO said it did not mean the world had failed to meet the goal over the long-term.
Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace
But the organisation’s state of the climate report, published on the first day of the UN Cop29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, has issued a red alert for the pace of climate change in a single generation, driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Countries are under pressure at the conference to deliver finance for poorer nations to tackle climate change and to increase their actions to meet the goals of the Paris climate treaty to curb global warming to 1.5C or 2C.
The WMO said that while long-term warming measured over decades remains below 1.5C, the past 10 years are the warmest on record, ocean heat reached new records in 2023, sea-level rise is accelerating, and Antarctic sea-ice extent is at its second-lowest level on record.
And the WMO warns weather and climate extremes from floods and storms to dangerous heat are hitting millions, causing loss of life, damage, worsening food insecurity and exacerbating displacement and migration.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said: “Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace.”
We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate
WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said “As monthly and annual warming temporarily surpass 1.5C, it is important to emphasise that this does not mean that we have failed to meet the Paris Agreement goal to keep the long-term global average surface temperature increase to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the warming to 1.5C.”
But she warned that whether it was above or below 1.5C, “every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks”.
“The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future,” she said.
“We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate,” she warned.
