2024 'certain' to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

This year is "effectively certain" to be the hottest on record and the first above a critical threshold to protect the planet from dangerously overheating, Europe's climate monitor said Monday.

The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which countries rich and poor were hammered by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity's role in Earth's rapid warming.

Copernicus said an unprecedented spell of extraordinary heat had pushed average global temperatures so high between January and November that this year was sure to eclipse 2023 as the hottest yet.

"At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record," the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin.

In another grim milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times before humanity started burning large volumes of fossil fuels.

Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5C over a decades-long period would greatly imperil the planet, and the world agreed under the Paris climate accord to strive to limit warming to this safer threshold.

Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess said a single year above 1.5C "does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever".

 Cost of inaction 

The world is nowhere near on track to meeting the 1.5C target.

In October, the U.N. said the current direction of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming.

Emissions from fossil fuels keep rising despite a global pledge to move the world away from coal, oil and gas.

When burned, fossil fuels release...