Hottest year on record sends planet past 1.5C for first time

Damian Carrington

Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people”. The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans. The heating is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the damage to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until coal, oil and gas are replaced. The Paris agreement target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 17 January 2025

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