ATHENS

2024 is on track to be the planet's warmest year on record, said the EU’s climate change agency on Thursday, hitting a new milestone in the globe’s escalating climate crisis.

“It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record. The average temperature anomaly for the rest of 2024 would have to drop to almost zero for 2024 to not be the warmest year,” the Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a statement.

It said the global average temperature for the past 12 months (November 2023 – October 2024) was 0.74C above the 1991-2020 average, and an estimated 1.62C degrees above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

More specifically for Europe, according to the agency, temperatures were above average over almost all of the continent.

Outside Europe, temperatures were most above average over northern Canada, and well above average over the central and western United States, northern Tibet, Japan, and Australia.

On the other hand, temperatures were most notably below average over central Greenland and Iceland.

Commenting on the findings, Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess stressed, “This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming (United Nations) Climate Change Conference, COP29," which is set to start next Monday in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.​​​​​​​