The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 is the warmest year on record, based on six international datasets.

The global average surface temperature was 1.55 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the 1850-1900 average, according to WMO’s consolidated analysis of the six datasets. The agency said that it means that the world has just experienced the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average (average temperature during the industrial era).

“Today’s assessment from the WMO proves yet again – global heating is a cold, hard fact,” said UN Secretary-General Antóno Guterres. “Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025. There's still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now,” he said in a statement issued on January 10.

The six datasets are from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Japan Meteorological Agency, NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the UK’s Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT), and Berkeley Earth.

“Climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series. This has been accompanied by devastating and extreme weather, rising sea levels and melting ice, all powered by record-breaking greenhouse gas levels due to human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“It is important to emphasize that a single year of more than 1.5°C for a year does not mean that we have failed to meet the Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades rather than an individual year. However, it is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet,” said Celeste Saulo.

The Paris Agreement had set the goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

WMO will provide full details of key climate change indicators, including greenhouse gases, surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea level rise, glacier retreat and sea ice extent, in its State of the Global Climate 2024 report to be issued in March 2025.

Global Climate Change

2024 declared warmest year on record by World Meteorological Organisation