GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENTISTS have confirmed 2024 was the world's hottest since records began, eclipsing the previous record set in 2023 and raising alarm that burning fossil fuels has left the planet 'teetering on the brink' of breaking the 1.5°C barrier set by the Paris Agreement.
Coordinated modelling and analysis produced by experts at NASA, European climate service Copernicus the US weather service NOAA, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth and the World Meteorological Organisation finds every year in the past decade has been one of the hottest ten on record.
The burning of coal, oil and gas is driving rising temperatures. For the first time in 2024 global average temperature was 1.6°C above the pre-industrial average, breaching the 1.5°C limit identified by scientists as necessary to maintain a safe and liveable climate long-term.
Climate Councillor, Professor David Karoly said: "These are not the records any climate scientist wants to see broken. When it comes to rising temperatures, rising sea levels and rising damage bills from unnatural disasters, every fraction of a degree matters.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense. The warmer atmosphere supercharges rain events, like the flooding in Spain that saw cars swept through the streets and, closer to home the flooding from ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily that became a statewide disaster event in Queensland last January.
"The agencies and scientists behind the latest findings remind us that 'the future is in our hands', slashing climate pollution this decade is critical.
"The temperature target in the Paris climate Agreement has not been breached yet because it is based on a temperature average over 20-30 years. The further and faster we're able to cut climate pollution this decade, the better the prospects for our kids future.
"According to the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology's State of the Climate 2024 Report (pp 6,30), if a global temperature rise of 1.5°C is maintained for 10-20 years, Australia will experience devastating consequences. The continental land masses, like Australia, heat up faster than the oceans, and therefore heat up more than the global average. The climate whiplash we're feeling now – as we're hurled from flooding rains to heatwaves and fierce fires, then back again – that will intensify, creating more disruption, dislocation, devastation and death."
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said: "People world-wide have suffered through ten years of record-breaking temperatures, driving deadly heatwaves, ferocious fires and record breaking flooding. 2025 must be game on for climate action in Australia.
"When the alarm bells are ringing, you act immediately. Slashing climate pollution this decade is critical to safeguard our children's future. This is the challenge for our political leaders this election year.
"We have started to make real progress: our grid is more renewable than ever, new EVs are hit the market at record rates, and we've just had a bumper year for big clean energy and storage projects. We can clean up our energy system by the 2030s.
"Global climate experts and the residents of Los Angeles have just shown us exactly what's at stake: lives, livelihoods, community safety and our way of life. We need to act before our kids' futures go up in smoke.
"It's time to draw a line in the sand and say 'no more fossil-fuelled temperature records'. Australia has everything we need for this to be the year we set records for all the right reasons: from climate ambition to renewable power, nature restoration to clean transport. So let's get on with it!
Top ten 2024 temperature "highlights":
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