It’s Official, 2024 Was the Hottest Year on Record

Climate scientists must fear sounding like a broken record when discussing new record temperatures yearly. But once again, last year was the hottest one ever recorded, according to a new study by NASA scientists.

Anyone paying close attention to climate news would not be surprised. From June 2023 through August 2024, every consecutive month broke a new monthly temperature record. That is 15 straight months of consistently high temperatures. 

Such a streak directly translates into the year’s overall temperature, but just how bad was it? The Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 195 countries and the European Union, attempts to limit the global rise in temperatures to 1.5? over a baseline temperature from the middle of last century (1951-1980). 2024 was already 1.28? above it. 

That’s not a great start, but the data gets even more dire for the climate-conscious. Temperatures in 2024 were already 1.47? above a baseline of temperatures from 1850-1900, a time before the industrial revolution, or automobile transportation, had taken off. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says, “That’s halfway to Pliocene-level warmth in just 150 years.”, referring to a geological period where a baseline temperature of just 1.5? above the Earth’s 2024 average resulted in sea levels that were tens of meters higher than total.

Such a sea level rise would devastate population centers home to literally billions of people and have such a dramatic effect on sea and wildlife that it’d be hard to predict the consequences. But it’s not like any of this information is new—it’s just worth reinforcing.

Even with reinforcement, more action is needed to solve the problem. The last ten years have been the warmest on record. While there is some variability between years, the trend in warming temperatures is obvious. Despite that, in 2022 and 2023, there were record releases of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

Additional effects could have impacted such a hot year in 2024. A NASA press release mentions everything from El Niño to volcanoes in Tonga to improved sulfur dioxide emissions from cargo ships. All undoubtedly impact the climate, but the contribution of each is difficult to tease out.

NASA’s global temperature assessment is based on data from thousands of weather stations scattered throughout the globe, both on land and sea. The same data was analyzed by other organizations, such as the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Berkeley Earth, the Hadley Centre, and Copernicus Climate Services. Each used slightly different methodologies and models to determine the Earth’s temperature last year. Still, each showed a trend toward hotter temperatures – which most scientists take as unambiguous proof that the planet is getting hotter.

However, many naysayers still can’t see the forest for the trees, as a nasty cold snap could convince them of the illusion of “global warming” in general. However, the world’s overall temperature shift is getting drastic enough that local areas are literally starting to feel the heat. Schmidt said, “When changes happen in the climate, you see it first in the global mean, then you see it at the continental scale, and then at the regional scale. Now we’re seeing it at the local level.”

The fires currently threatening NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena are just one symptom of the ongoing environmental challenges facing the world. This NASA report is just the most recent in a long line of reports that all point to the same conclusion—the world is getting warmer, and we humans are likely the ones causing it. 

Learn More:
NASA – Temperatures Rising: NASA Confirms 2024 Warmest Year on Record
UT – NASA Confirms that 2023 was the Hottest Year on Record
UT – NASA Confirms That 2023 was the Hottest Summer on Record
UT – Global Temperatures Continue to Rise

Lead Image:
This map of Earth in 2024 shows global surface temperature anomalies, or how much warmer or cooler each region of the planet was compared to the average from 1951 to 1980. Normal temperatures are shown in white, higher-than-normal temperatures in red and orange, and lower-than-normal temperatures in blue. An animated version of this map shows global temperature anomalies changing over time, dating back to 1880. Download this visualization from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5450.
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

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