COPERNICUS - The 2024 Annual Climate Summary - Global Climate Highlights 2024
Renaud de RICHTER
2024 is confirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to be the warmest year on record globally, and the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.
Global surface air temperature highlights:
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2024 was the warmest year in global temperature records going back to 1850. According to ERA5 (1), the global average temperature of 15.10°C was 0.72°C above the 1991-2020 average, and 0.12°C above 2023, the previous warmest year on record. This is equivalent to 1.60°C above an estimate of the 1850-1900 temperature designated to be the pre-industrial level.
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2024 is the first calendar year that has reached more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
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Each of the past 10 years (2015–2024) was one of the 10 warmest years on record.
The atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane continued to increase during 2024. Preliminary analysis of satellite data, averaged over the whole atmospheric column, shows that carbon dioxide concentrations are approximately 2.9 ppm (+/- 0.3 ppm) higher in 2024 compared to the previous record year of 2023, while methane rose by around 3 ppb (+/- 2 ppb). This resulted in an annual average for 2024 of approximately 422.1 ppm for carbon dioxide and 1897 ppb for methane. The rate of increase of carbon dioxide was larger than the rate observed in recent years (the increase from 2022 to 2023 was 2.5 ppm).
The rate of increase of methane was lower than in previous years. For example, the increase from 2022 to 2023 was twice as large. Atmospheric concentrations of methane had substantially grown throughout the 20th century, before plateauing from 2000 to 2006.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher in 2024 than at any time in at least 2,000,000 years. Atmospheric concentrations of methane in 2024 were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.