'The future is in our hands’: Climate scientists share solutions as 2024 declared hottest on record

2024 was the warmest year on record and the first calendar year where the global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Scientists had suspected 2024 would clinch the record and now it has been confirmed.

Each of the last 10 years - from 2015 to 2024 - was one of the 10 warmest on record, according to the EU climate monitoring service. Its 2024 Global Climate Highlights report outlines the exceptional conditions the world experienced last year.

“We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5ºC level defined in the Paris Agreement and the average of the last two years is already above this level,” says Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

“These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.”

Europe saw extreme weather sweep the continent throughout the year, with hundreds of lives lost in disasters like the Valencia floods, Storm Boris and sweltering summer heatwaves in the Mediterranean.

Last year was the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level and the two-year average from 2023 to 2024 also exceeds this threshold.

The limit set by the Paris Agreement refers to temperature anomalies averaged over at least 20 years so this hasn't yet been broken. The data, however, underscores that global temperatures are now rising beyond what modern humans have ever experienced before.

“Hopefully that is really a wake-up call for humanity,” says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) vice chair Diana Urge-Vorsatz.

Currently, the IPCC