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“We’ve Had an Extraordinary Year for Climate Change”: WMO Reports Record-Breaking Temperatures
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that 2024 was an extraordinary year for climate change, with record-breaking temperatures and devastating weather events around the world. WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis described the year as “an extraordinary year of extraordinary land, sea surface temperatures, and ocean heat, accompanied by very extreme weather.”
According to the WMO, four out of six international datasets indicate that the global average temperature increase for the year was higher than 1.5°C, a key goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while striving to hold the increase to 1.5°C.
The Paris Agreement is “not yet dead but in grave danger,” according to the WMO, as the long-term temperature goals are measured over decades, rather than individual years. However, the agency emphasized that every fraction of a degree of warming matters and that the current pace of global warming is causing devastating impacts on lives, economies, and the planet.
The WMO also highlighted a recent scientific study on ocean warming, which found that the ocean has never been warmer than it was in 2024, both at the surface and in the upper 2,000 meters. The study, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, found that the upper 2,000 meters of ocean became warmer by 16 zettajoules (1,021 Joules) from 2023 to 2024, equivalent to about 140 times the world’s total electricity output.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments to deliver new national climate action plans this year to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5°C and support the most vulnerable in dealing with devastating climate impacts. “There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now,” he said.