The Thompson fire burns around Lake Oroville in Oroville, California on July 2, 2024. The year 2024 has been another challenging one for Earth’s climate , marked by record temperatures, extreme weather events, and urgent warnings from scientists about the accelerating pace of global warming. An analysis by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union agency that tracks global warming, suggests this year will be the hottest since instrument record keeping began more than a century ago — beating climate records set just last year. 2024 will also be the first calendar year in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the target set under the Paris Agreement to limit the worst effects of climate change. A single year above the threshold “does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached,” the deputy director of C3S Samantha Burgess said in a recent news release , “but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.” Earth surpasses 1.5 C warming every month for entire year The year began with the continuation of a record 13-month heat streak , which ended in July as the natural El Niño climate pattern subsided. This period included an exceptionally warm summer that broke all-time heat records across the U.S., with multiple cities on both coasts sweltering through their hottest temperatures in seven decades of recordkeeping. This year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended on Nov. 30, showed above-average activity with 18 named storms, including the record-setter Hurricane Helene that slammed into Florida’s Big Bend region, the deadliest to affect the continental U.S. since Katrina in 2005, according to NOAA. “The impactful and deadly 2024 hurricane season started off intensely, then relaxed a bit before roaring back,” Matthew Rosencrans, the […]