The United Nations is re-imposing the highest alert level due to the severity of climate change within a single generation. This was announced by the World Weather Organization (WMO) when presenting its report on the state of the global climate in 2024.

On track for records in 2024

From January to September this year, the global average temperature was a record 1.54 degrees above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900), the WMO reported at the World Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Climate researchers hardly expect that much will change by the end of the year. The EU climate change service Copernicus had already reported that 2024 was likely to be the warmest year since. The WMO evaluates its data and that of five other institutes for its forecasts.

So far, 2023 has been the warmest year since industrialization (1850-1900), with a global average temperature of plus 1.48 degrees. As greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise in the atmosphere, climate change is expected to continue to accelerate with higher temperatures, rising sea levels, more droughts and wildfires and extreme weather, according to the WMO.

1.5 degree target not yet missed

The global goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees if possible in order to prevent the worst consequences of climate change has not yet been missed with a year with over 1.5 degrees of warming. According to the WMO, there are too many short-term natural influences on the climate. This includes the El Niño phenomenon, which is noticeable every few years and which had a warming effect in 2023 and early 2024.

The target is based on an average value over at least two decades. According to WMO experts, the long-term average of warming is currently around 1.3 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Foretaste of the future

“The record-breaking rains and floods, the hurricanes that are suddenly becoming rapidly more dangerous, the deadly heat, the unrelenting drought and the terrible wildfires that we have experienced in various parts of the world this year are, unfortunately, a foretaste of our future,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

The ten-year period 2015 to 2024 was the warmest decade since observations began 175 years ago, according to the WMO. On average, oceans were warmer last year than ever since records began. Preliminary data suggested temperatures were similarly high this year. 90 percent of the earth’s energy is stored in the oceans. Warming is a change that will be irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.

Due to the expansion of warmer water and ice melt, sea levels rose by 4.77 millimeters per year from 2014 to 2023, more than twice as fast as from 1993 to 2002. Last year, glaciers worldwide lost more ice than in any other year since measurements began in 1953.

Warming oceans, glacier melt and sea level rise accelerated, and extreme weather wreaked havoc.