2024 Is on Pace to Be the Hottest Year on Record Due to Climate Change — Details Here
Places where heat is the norm also saw temperatures spike.
Published Sept. 23 2024, 2:11 p.m. ET
If you thought 2024 was a hot one, you're not alone. While many people felt the heat across the globe, folks in areas that already experience the summer swelter saw a huge spike in average temperatures during the year.
Experts say that 2024 is likely going to be named the hottest year thanks to different data trends, breaking a record set just one year prior in 2023.
Climate change seems to be one of the main factors ramping up the temperatures, which means that theoretically, 2024 may not hold the title for long.
Keep reading to learn when experts will determine which year is the hottest on record.
2023 is the current hottest year on record.
In January 2024, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), an organization that tracks global trends on climate change, named 2023 "the hottest year on record." Researchers came to their conclusion by tracking different indicators over the calendar year, noting that 2023 beat out the previous record holder (2016) by quite a big difference.
C3S noted that July and August were by far the warmest months of the year and that June through August 2023 was the warmest "boreal summer" since they began tracking the data back in 1850.
They also noted that greenhouse gas concentrations also reached record breaking numbers, with carbon dioxide showing up 2.4 parts per million (ppm) higher than the year prior, and methane increasing by parts per billion (ppb) over the same period. Those greenhouse gas numbers in combination with the effects of El Niño seemed to play a major part in the increased heat.
2024 is on pace to gain the title of the hottest year on record thanks to climate change.
According to the Associated Press, the summer of 2024 pushed the envelope as far as heat was concerned, with June and August breaking global records. The summertime temperatures have prompted C3S director Carlo Buontempoto to consider naming 2024 as the hottest year on record since the average temperature of 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit appears on pace to stay .05 degrees warmer than what it was throughout 2023.
Even with near certainty that things won't change drastically enough to change their decision, C3S will wait until the year comes to a close before making the call. “In order for 2024 not to become the warmest on record, we need to see very significant landscape cooling for the remaining few months, which doesn’t look likely at this stage,” the director explained.
Unlike in 2023, 2024's numbers appear to have been reached without the help of El Niño — the weather system that the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration says is responsible for bringing warmer and more arid temperatures to the U.S. — putting the onus on human-led climate change.
“It’s really not surprising that we see this, this heat wave, that we see these temperature extremes,” Buontempo continued. “We are bound to see more.”
Unfortunately, rising temperatures aren't all that we're likely to experience as a result of the continued climate change driving these numbers up. More instances of severe weather, including rainfall in some areas and wildfires in others, may also continue to be on the horizon unless something is done to reduce those greenhouse gasses and alleviate some of these temperatures.
