It’s official. The Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Independent analyses by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Berkeley Earth, the Hadley Centre (part of the United Kingdom’s weather forecasting Met Office), and Copernicus Climate Services (C3S) in Europe have the same findings. The past ten years 2015-2024 were also the ten warmest years on record.
For NASA, global temperatures in 2024 were 1.28°C above the agency’s 20th-century baseline (1951–1980), which tops the record set in 2023. The new record comes after 15 consecutive months (June 2023 through August 2024) of monthly temperature records, an unprecedented heat streak. NASA scientists further estimate that the Earth in 2024 was about 1.47°C warmer than the 1850–1900 average.
The WMO measurement was even higher. According to WMO’s consolidated analysis of the six datasets, the global average surface temperature was 1.55 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the 1850-1900 average. The WMO said that the Earth has likely just experienced the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average. The C3S puts the measurement at 1.60°C warmer than the pre-industrial level.
The WMO and C3S findings have breached for the first time in a calendar year the 1.5°C limit set in the Paris Agreement. How serious is the 1.5°C increase? Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute said that temperatures during the warm periods on Earth three million years ago were only around 3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels. We reached halfway of that level warmth in just 150 years.
Global warming is largely caused by the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. They are called greenhouse gases because they trap heat like a greenhouse. According to WMO, greenhouse gas levels surged to a new record in 2023 with CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere faster than any time experienced during human existence.
What does this mean for the Philippines? Not good. According to PAGASA, climate change in the Philippines will cause more frequent extreme temperatures and rainfall events, and a rise in sea levels. It will be recalled that in the 2024 edition of the World Risk Report, the Philippines was named the most at-risk country to extreme natural events for the third time in a row.
Last year we saw extreme weather events. For the first time classes were suspended due to extreme heat. In November, the Philippines was hit by successive strong typhoons that came one after another. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, it was the first time since records began in 1951 that so many storms co-existed in the Pacific basin.
A study was done to investigate typhoon Carina’s (Gaemi) strong winds which struck the Philippines in July last year. It was shown that climate change was responsible for an increase of about 30% in the number of such storms (now 6-7 times per year, up from 5 times), and equivalently that the maximum wind speeds of similar storms are now 3.9 meter per second (around 7%) more intense.