The World Meteorological Organization confirms: 2024 may have likely been the first calendar year with global mean temperature more than 1.5°C above the 1850 to 1900 average.
By Climate Spotlight Staff
BELMOPAN, Jan. 10, 2025 – The coordinated release of six datasets, all confirming that 2024 was the warmest year on record, underlines the unprecedented conditions the globe faced last year. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) consolidated these datasets and used them to calculate its figure.
According to the WMO’s consolidated analysis, the global average surface temperature was 1.55°C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13°C) above the 1850-1900 average.
“This means that we have likely just experienced the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average,” the WMO release published today states.
The years 2015 to 2024 rank among the top ten warmest years, according to the organization, referring to the trend as an “extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures.” Advances in Atmospheric Sciences published a second study that found ocean warming in 2024 played a key role in the record-high temperature.
The ocean stores roughly 90% of the excess heat from global warming, making it a key indicator of climate change.
1.5°C: Still Alive?
Yes. The fact that global averages exceeded the Paris Agreement goal for a single year does not mean all is lost. As WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explains, “It is important to emphasize that a single year of more than 1.5°C does NOT mean that we have failed to meet Paris Agreement long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades rather than an individual year.”
Saulo added, however, that every fraction of a degree of warming matters for our lives, economies, and planet.
“Individual years pushing past the 1.5-degree limit does not mean the long-term goal is shot,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said today.
Still Hope
In a release published by the United Nations today, Guterres emphasized, “There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now.”
“Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025,” he said.
Guterres explained, “Specifically, governments must deliver new national climate action plans this year to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5°C and support the most vulnerable in dealing with devastating climate impacts.”
More Climate Change Indicators by WMO
The consolidated analysis produced by the WMO was made possible by datasets from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Japan Meteorological Agency, NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the UK’s Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT), and Berkeley Earth.
WMO Secretary-General Saulo said, “Climate history is playing out before our eyes.”
The release outlines that from 2023 to 2024, the global upper 2000-meter ocean heat content increased by about 140 times the world’s total electricity generation in 2023, according to the dataset from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics.
The Global Climate 2024 report will be issued by the WMO in March 2025. It will provide details of key climate change indicators and high-impact events.
