A ‘Virtually Certain’ Warmest Year, Again

The E.U.’s Copernicus Climate Change service reported on Thursday that we are currently living through the warmest year on record. Again.

This isn’t surprising news, of course; NOAA already had the chances at 99.8 percent of 2024 breaking the record in its September report. But now, after the second-warmest October globally, trailing only last year, the global average temperature is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest in the record books. “The average temperature anomaly for the remaining two months of this year would need to drop by an unprecedented amount” in order for the 2023 record to stand. It won’t, and so it won’t.

The last 12 months were an average of 1.62 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, and 2024 is likely to end up 1.55 degrees C higher than that pre-warming temperature. This is dire, of course, though importantly it does not mean the aspirational 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement is already gone; that would require an extended, decade-ish-long stay above 1.5 degrees, and it’s certainly possible that next year, aided by an oncoming La Niña and its cooling effect, could dip back below the threshold.

That would only be temporary, of course. That 1.5-degree target is basically gone, even if it’s not official yet. I’m virtually certain of it.