The wreckage of a car swept away and pulverized in flash flooding in November in the flood-hit municipality of Letur in Albacete province, Spain. The European Union’s global warming watchdog warned Monday that November was the warmest ever and the 16th month in 17 months in which global average surface air temperature rise exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius. File photo by Ismael Herrero/EPA-EFE
The second-warmest November ever, with an average global surface temperature 0.73 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average, means 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record, the European Union’s global warming watchdog warned Monday.
Despite coming in 0.12 degrees Celsius cooler than the same month in 2023, the 14.1 degrees Celsius average recorded for November 2024 was 1.62 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level and was the 16th month in a 17-month period for which the global average surface air temperature exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold above pre-industrial levels, the E.U. Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a news release. Advertisement
The January-November global average temperature was the highest on record at 0.72 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, 0.14degrees Celsius warmer than the same period in 2023.
“With Copernicus data in from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with virtual certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first calendar year above 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess.
“This does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.” Advertisement
Temperatures for September 2023 through April 2024 and in October and November came in at between 1.58 degrees Celsius and 1.78 degrees Celsius, well above the threshold at which 196 countries pledged to cap global temperature rise in the December 2015 Paris Agreement.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that temperature rises beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels substantially raise the likelihood of grave climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts and heatwaves, and storms and heavy rain.
For the purposes of climate science, the point at which the world is judged to have entered the industrial era is 1850 — even though the process had already been underway for many decades in Europe and the United States.
Across the world’s regions, the picture for November was, however, mixed with a 5.14 degrees Celsius average land temperature for Europe — 0.78 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average — placing it outside of the top 10 warmest recorded Novembers the continent has seen.
The reading was less than half the record 1.74 degrees Celsius above average temperature in Nov. 2015, the warmest European November since records began.
Temperatures were also below average in southeastern Europe, but above average over northern Russia and across northeastern and southwestern Europe, according to the data collected by Copernicus, the earth observation component of the EU’s space program. Advertisement
The western United States, parts of northern Africa, Russia’s far east, and the bulk of Antarctica posted temperatures the furthest below the average for November.
Regions that saw the largest upward deviation from average were led by eastern Canada and the central and eastern United States, large parts of Mexico, Morocco, northwest Africa, China, Pakistan and most of Siberia.
