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We have reached a point where it is safe to presume that 2024 will go down in history as the hottest year ever recorded.
And so was 2023.
Furthermore, 2022 was the fifth warmest year to have been recorded. This rapid descent into the climate crisis makes one ponder if we are metaphorically marching towards a cliff’s edge or have we already slipped past the edge and are actually in a state of free fall.
Is it just a matter of time before we feel the collision when we hit the ground?
When this breaking of weather records becomes a routine affair, the collective global attention towards the climate crisis gets diluted. However, at Down To Earth (DTE) we report on these record-breaking events as and when they happen.
In order to ensure that our readers are updated with how the record-breaking heat was reported, here’s a recap of the fleeting year:
In 2024, not a single month experienced normal temperatures which includes the average maximum, minimum and mean temperatures during the first 11 months so far.
Amongst these, the difference between average minimum temperatures recorded in the months and deviation from the normal (1981-2010 average) have been much more.
With the exception of March, ten of India's first eleven months in 2024 saw minimum temperatures that were in the top ten highest since records began in 1901, a span of 123 years.
A new study has predicted a 68 per cent chance of temperatures and humidity levels smashing records in India and other tropical countries this summer.
Northern India, for example, faces a 50 per cent chance of suffering record heat and humidity this summer, the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters stated.
The new research established the potential to predict the maximum wet-bulb temperature of a particular year five months in advance, the authors claimed.
The year 2024 is well on its way to become the hottest year since the preindustrial period, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The year may also be the first year to cross the 1.5°C above the preindustrial annual average temperature, according to the C3S. The C3S concluded this after analysing the data for the first 10 months of 2024.
This would be the second year in a row when the global annual temperature record would be broken.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the C3S.
October 2024 was the hottest October month for India since 1901 in terms of mean temperatures and minimum temperatures, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and at least a part of the reason could be global warming.
For Delhi specifically, where not even a drop of rain fell in the month, October has been the warmest since 1951, according to IMD.
While the reason for such high temperatures across some regions such as the northwest could be lack of western disturbances and rainfall, the overall reason could be a background warming which has cranked up temperatures in various countries across the world over the past couple of years and particularly in October.
The Earth witnessed two hottest days on record last month, with daily global average temperatures on July 22 and 23 registering 17.16 degrees Celsius (°C) and 17.15°C, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Globally, the July 2024 surface air temperature of 16.91°C was 0.68°C above the 1991-2020 average for that month. It was also only 0.04°C lower than the previous high set in July 2023.
One factor that may have driven this spike in global temperature was the above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica reaching 10°C above average in some areas, and above-average temperatures in parts of the Southern Ocean, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pointed out.
September 2024 was the second-warmest September for the globe and for Europe, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) of the European Union, as per a statement released on October 8, 2024.
The warmest September globally has been September 2023. September 2024 recorded an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 16.17°C, 0.73°C above the 1991-2020 average for September, the statement added.
“September 2024 was 1.54°C above the pre-industrial level and was the 14th month in a 15-month period for which the global-average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” the C3S noted.
The summer of 2023 was the warmest in the last 2,000 years in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a new study. Rising greenhouse gas emissions and a climate pattern are thought to have contributed to this.
The 2023 summer temperature was 1.19°C higher than the warmest summer in the year 246 (0.88°C), the study published in Nature noted. This was recorded during the Late Roman Warm Period, from AD 1 to AD 500, and is considered the warmest period of the last 2,000 years. It was driven by natural processes.
Further, the 2023 summer was almost 4°C warmer than the coldest summer in the year 536 over the last 2,000 years. This cooling followed a large-scale volcanic eruption, which released sulphur dioxide. The gas forms sulphuric acid aerosols in the stratosphere and reflects incoming solar radiation, cooling the Earth’s surface.
