November 2024 was the second warmest November globally, confirming expectations that 2024 will be the warmest year on record, EU’s climate service Copernicus said on Monday.
November 2024 was 1.62 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, only behind November 2023, according to the agency.
“At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record and more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level,” Copernicus said in a statement.
Its findings are based on a dataset that uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations around the world.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said that the 2024 data “does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.”
The European climate body also said that the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its lowest monthly level in November, measuring 10 percent below average, continuing a series of historically large negative anomalies observed throughout 2023 and 2024.
