Fresh evidence today has set out how quickly the Earth’s climate is changing – in some places so fast it has shocked scientists.
The new report arrives as the UK’s long-standing political consensus on tackling climate change fractures – with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch questioning the necessary pace of climate action – and as President Donald Trump seeks to scrap US climate rules.
The new analysis from the United Nations’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) today found that 2024 was the hottest on records going back 175 years.
Each of the last 10 years has been in the top 10 warmest years on record – a trend that is unprecedented, as previously such a time period has always been punctuated by colder years.
“That has never happened before, going back to 1850,” said Prof Chris Hewitt, director of climate services at the WMO.
The team were also shocked by the way the final months of 2024 remained hot, even as the natural warming effect of the transient El Nino weather phenomenon subsided.
The fact the “warmth continued for so long” even the world moved to more neutral conditions after El Nino has been “really quite extraordinary” said Dr John Kennedy, lead author of the WMO’s State of the Global Climate Report for 2024.
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It also found:
The UK Met Office’s Prof Stephen Belcher said the earth is “profoundly ill. Many of the vital signs are sounding alarms”.
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the planet is “issuing more distress signals” and urged leaders to “step up” with new national climate plans due this year.
Meanwhile, some leaders are going cold on climate action, with President Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, and Argentina walking away from global talks last year.
However, the UK’s climate envoy on Tuesday struck a more optimistic note, saying other countries are still talking about how to go green, not if they should.
China, the world’s largest emitter, installed more wind and solar power last year than ever before, and in 2023 as much solar power as the world combined.
But last year’s heat drove extreme weather events that forced more people from their homes than in any year since 2008, destroying critical infrastructure, forests, farmland and biodiversity too.
In the United States, Hurricanes Helene and Milton brought damage costing tens of billions of dollars and killed more than 200 people.
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Tropical Cyclone Chido killed at least 100 and inflicted costly damage on Mozambique, Malawi and French island Mayotte. It displaced around 100,000 people in Mozambique.
Bob Ward, from the London School of Economics’s climate institute, said: “This analysis shows that even the United States, the richest country in the world, cannot escape these growing impacts… which are causing suffering for increasing numbers of Americans.”
