With global temperatures for the January-August period recorded at 0.70 degrees Celsius above the 1991–2020 average, the European climate change service Copernicus said on Friday that it was increasingly likely 2024 would be the warmest year on record.
According to the latest update from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), August was the joint warmest August globally (along with August 2023), with an average surface air temperature of 16.82 degrees Celsius — 0.71 degrees Celsius above 1991-2020 average for the month.
It was also 1.51 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, making it the 13th month in the past 14 during which the global average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The year-to-date (January-August) global average temperature anomaly is 0.70 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, the highest on record for this period, and 0.23 degrees Celsius warmer than the same period in 2023, C3S scientists said.
For 2024 not to surpass 2023 as the warmest year, the average anomaly for the remaining months would need to drop by at least 0.30 degrees Celsius. This has not occurred since 1940, making it increasingly likely that 2024 will be the warmest year record, the scientists said.