2024 was the first calendar year in which the global average temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is the most ambitious threshold set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 — a limit that must not be crossed if we are to avoid turning the climate crisis into a catastrophe. So says the European climate monitoring service Copernicus, which notes that human-induced climate change remains "the main driver of the extreme temperatures recorded at the surface of land and ocean".

The role of climate change and El Niño in breaching the 1.5-degree threshold

Adding to this is the negative contribution of the meteorological phenomenon known as El Niño, which causes a warming of the surface temperature of the central-southern and eastern Pacific Ocean: a variation that can reach 3–4 degrees Celsius and is capable of influencing the global climate.

Exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold in 2024 is undoubtedly yet another wake-up call for governments around the world, from whom drastic and immediate action is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, starting with those caused by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas).

Copernicus ECMWF @CopernicusECMWF

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2024 was the warmest year on record with an average global temp. 1.6°C above pre-ind. level.
It's the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-ind. level, with every month but one since July 23 surpassing this threshold. Full Global Climate Highlights 2024:
bit.ly/424M12O

♥ 322💬 25 10 gen 2025 · Apri su X →

"Rapid and decisive action can still make a difference. It depends on us"

However, having exceeded 1.5 degrees in the past year does not mean the world has definitively missed the target set by the Paris Agreement: for that to happen, the global average temperature would need to remain consistently above the threshold. "All international global temperature datasets show that 2024 was the warmest year since records began in 1850. Humanity is responsible for its own destiny," observed Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. He nonetheless emphasises that humanity's future is still "in our hands: rapid and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate".

The figures certainly leave little room for optimism. In 2024 the global average temperature stood at 15.1 degrees Celsius over land surfaces: a figure 0.72 degrees above the 1991–2020 average, 0.12 degrees above 2023 and, most strikingly, 1.60 degrees above the 1850–1900 average — the pre-industrial period, before humanity began emitting vast quantities of greenhouse gases to power its output, primarily industrial and energy-related.

Records over the past ten years and alarming ocean data

This trend was, in any case, expected, given that each of the last ten years (between 2015 and 2024) ranked among the ten warmest ever recorded. And things have gone particularly badly in our hemisphere: "2024 saw three record-breaking seasons: the boreal winter (December 2023–February 2024), the boreal spring (March–May) and the boreal summer (June–August), at respectively 0.78, 0.68 and 0.69 degrees above the 1991–2020 average".

In Europe in particular, 2024 was the warmest year since temperatures began to be recorded systematically: the average was 10.69 degrees Celsius, 1.47 degrees above the 1991–2020 period and fully 0.28 degrees above the previous record, set in 2020. All of this with peaks in spring and summer.

Finally, the data on temperatures recorded at the surface of the world's oceans are also cause for concern: the average across the seas analysed was 20.87 degrees Celsius — an all-time record, 0.51 degrees above the 1991–2020 average.