Climate change is spiralling out of control, with many of the consequences now ‘irreversible’, a damning report has found.
In 2024, records were smashed for greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures, and sea level rise.
Last year was the hottest in the 175-year record and the first to have an average surface temperature 1.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial average – the limit nations committed to under the Paris Agreement.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the effects of these changes are likely to be felt for hundreds, if not thousands of years to come.
The report warns that this is causing significant knock-on effects for the wider climate, including shrinking ice sheets and glaciers and increasingly violent extreme weather.
Although these record-high temperatures were enhanced by a warming El Niño event, experts say that greenhouse gas emissions were the primary driver.
The total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere hit 3.276 trillion tonnes – the highest level in over 800,000 years.
Professor Stephen Belcher, Met Office chief scientist, says: ‘The latest planetary health check tells us that Earth is profoundly ill. Many of the vital signs are sounding alarms.’
2024 was the hottest year on record and was the first calendar year to be more than 1.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial average – the limit nations committed to under the Paris Agreement. Pictured: The Sau reservoir north of Barcelona, Spain during a 2024 drought
The WMO’s report shows that every key sign of human-caused climate change reached new heights in 2024.
Most noticeably, last year followed an ongoing trend of increasing surface temperatures.
Greenhouse gases like CO2 act like a thermal blanket over Earth, preventing heat from the sun escaping back out into space.
The WMO found that the global CO2 concentration hit 420 parts per million (ppm) last year.
That is 2.3 ppm higher than in 2022 and 151 per cent of the level before industrialisation started adding large amounts of CO2 into the air.
As humans produce ever more emissions, this has caused a rapid shift in the Earth’s climate which is far faster than any previous natural changes.
Last year, the global mean surface temperature was approximately 1.55°C (2.79°F) above the average for 1850-1900, the period defined as pre-industrial.
Although that is above the warming limits laid out in the Paris Agreement, the agreement has not been breached because the long-term warming remains below 1.5°C.
Despite global efforts to reduce climate change, burning fossil fuels, particularly in coal power plants like this one in Dingzhou, China, is still creating huge amounts of CO2
The WMO estimates that the long-term warming, averaged over decades rather than a single year, is now 1.34-1.41°C (2.41-2.54°F) above the pre-industrial average.
Likewise, since 90 per cent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the ocean, increasing emissions causes the oceans to warm.
In 2024, ocean temperatures were at their highest level in the 65 years in which they have been recorded.
Worryingly, these findings also show that the rate of ocean warming has significantly increased.
The rate of ocean warming in the two decades from 2005 to 2024 was more than double that in the period between 1960 and 2005.
Additionally, climate projections show that the ocean will continue to warm for at least the rest of the 21st century even in the most optimistic low-emissions scenarios.
Likewise, since CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for generations, the effects of our pollution today will be felt for hundreds of years to come.
However, the warming climate is already having an immediate impact on the lives of millions of people today.
As greenhouse gases trap more heat, 90 per cent of that energy ends up stored in the oceans. This has caused global ocean temperatures to reach their highest point since record-keeping began 65 years ago
The warming ocean has led to global sea ice melting at a faster-than-normal rate and recovering less rapidly in the winter. This has led to Antarctic and Arctic sea ice plummeting to some of the lowest extents on record (file photo)
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo says: ‘Data for 2024 show that our oceans continued to warm, and sea levels continued to rise.
‘The frozen parts of Earth’s surface, known as the cryosphere, are melting at an alarming rate: glaciers continue to retreat, and Antarctic sea-ice reached its second-lowest extent ever recorded.’
In Antarctica, the maximum and minimum sea-ice extents for the year were both the second lowest since records began in 1979.
This was also the third year in a row that the minimum daily sea-ice extent dipped below two million kilometres squared (772,000 square miles).
In the Arctic, the minimum daily extent of sea-ice in the Arctic in 2024 was 4.28 million kilometres squared (1.65 million square miles), the seventh lowest extent on record.
Likewise, the largest three-year loss in glacier size occurred over the last three years, with particularly big losses occurring in Norway, Sweden, Svalbard, and the Andes.
As the world’s ice melts and the oceans warm, this also triggers the global sea level to rise.
Recent studies have also shown that Earth’s glaciers are melting so fast that they now release 273 billion tonnes of ice into the ocean each year.
In the Antarctic, the maximum and minimum sea-ice extents for the year were both the second lowest since records began in 1979
In the Arctic, the minimum daily extent of sea-ice in the Arctic in 2024 was 4.28 million kilometres squared (1.65 million square miles), the seventh lowest extent on record.
While the world’s glaciers have lost five per cent of their mass on average, glaciers in central Europe have already shrunk by almost 40 per cent.
Since 2000, this has increased the global sea level by 0.7 inches (1.8cm) – making glaciers the second biggest contributor to the rising ocean.
The WMO’s report warns that global sea levels are now the highest since the satellite record began in 1993, and the rate of increase has only become faster.
The rate of increase in the decade from 2015 to 2024 was double that from 1993 to 2002, increasing from 2.1 mm per year to 4.7 mm per year.
‘Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to have devastating consequences around the world,’ says Ms Saulo.
This is because a warmer climate is capable of storing more water and more energy, making extreme weather events more frequent and more violent when they do occur.
At the same time, studies have shown that many areas around the globe have undergone rapid and dramatic shifts from one climate extreme to another.
Some countries that were extremely dry are now extremely wet and vice versa, while some areas are experiencing an intensification of both wet and dry periods in a process dubbed ‘climate whiplash’.
Warming oceans and the rapid melting of Earth’s ice sheets and glaciers have increased the rate at which sea levels are rising. The rate of increase from 2015 to 2024 was double that from 1993 to 2002, increasing from 2.1 mm per year to 4.7 mm per year
As the atmosphere gets warmer on average, this triggers rapid changes to global weather patterns. As this map shows, that has meant some regions experiencing significantly drier conditions, while others are battered by massively increased precipitation
Previous studies have found that almost one in five of the world’s largest cities is undergoing ‘climate whiplash’ as they face more extreme droughts and more extreme flooding. Pictured: Flooding during 2024 in Jakarta, Indonesia which is one of the worst-affected cities
This means that many urban areas are being battered by back-to-back years of flooding and drought.
The WMO report warns that floods, tropical storms, droughts, and other hazards in 2024 led to more people being displaced in a 12-month period than in any of the last 16 years.
In the United States, Hurricanes Helene and Milton in October both made landfall on the west coast of Florida as major hurricanes, with economic losses of tens of billions of dollars.
Over 200 deaths were associated with the exceptional rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Helene, the most in a mainland United States hurricane since Katrina in 2005.
However, the WMO says that it is not too late to mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change.
Ms Saulo says: ‘We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate early warning systems. This must change.’
The long-term average warming is yet to exceed the limits of the Paris Agreement and experts agree that every degree of warming avoided will lead to measurable reductions in the impacts of climate change.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres added: ‘Our planet is issuing more distress signals – but this report shows that limiting long-term global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible.’
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