2024 was the hottest year on record, for the first time above Paris agreement targets, according to Copernicus

The average global temperature has exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level. This symbolic bar corresponds to the most ambitious limit of the 2015 Paris agreement.

The year 2024 was the hottest year on record globally and the first calendar year where the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level, Copernicus announced on Friday January 10* (C3S), a European Union program that collects data on the state of the planet.

This symbolic bar corresponds to the most ambitious limit of the 2015 Paris agreement, aiming to contain warming well below 2°C and to continue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. This agreement, however, refers to long-term trends: the average warming of 1.5°C must be observed over at least 20 years to consider the limit crossed.

In November, the Copernicus Institute had already warned that this limit would be crossed in 2024. “We are now on track to exceed the 1.5 degree level set in the Paris Agreement and average temperaturescontinues in this press release Samantha Burgess, strategic manager for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Every year of the last decade has been one of the ten hottest years on record.”

“All internationally produced global temperature datasets show that 2024 was the warmest year since records began in 1850”explains the director of Copernicus, Carlo Buontempo, in a press release. “Humanity is responsible for our own destiny. The future is in our hands – rapid and decisive action can yet change the trajectory of our future climate”he adds.

*Methodology: Copernicus is a component of the space program, specialized in Earth observation. It collects its data by satellite and “in situ”, from ships, planes and weather stations located all over the globe.