NEW DELHI: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 is the warmest year on record, based on six international datasets.
The past 10 years have all been in the top 10 in an extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures. The global average surface temperature was 1.55°C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the 1850-1900 average, according to WMO’s consolidated analysis of the six datasets. “Today’s assessment from the WMO proves yet again: global heating is a cold, hard fact,” said UN Secretary-General Antóno Guterres.
WMO provides a temperature assessment based on multiple sources of data to support climate monitoring and provide authoritative information for the UN Climate Change negotiating process.
The datasets are from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, Japan Meteorological Agency, NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK’s Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and Berkeley Earth.
There is a margin of uncertainty in all temperature assessments. All six datasets place 2024 as the warmest year on record. But not all show the temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C due to differing methodologies.
Short-term temperature spikes in long-term warming can be caused by naturally occurring phenomena like El Niño, which persisted from mid-2023 to May 2024.
“Climate history is playing out before our eyes,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.