By Anjali Sharma
UNITED NATIONS – World Meteorological Organization on Monday said that the year 2024 is set to be the warmest on record, capped a decade of unprecedented heat fuelled by human activities
UNSG António Guterres in his message for the New Year said “Today I can officially report that we have just endured a decade of deadly heat. The top ten hottest years on record have happened in the last ten years, including 2024.”
“This is climate breakdown in real time. We must exit this road to ruin and we have no time to lose,” he emphasized.
WMO will publish the consolidated global temperature figure for 2024 in January and its full State of the Global Climate 2024 report in March 2025.
It noted that throughout 2024, a series of reports from the WMO community highlighted the rapid pace of climate change and its far-reaching impacts on every aspect of sustainable development.
Record-breaking rainfalls were documented as well as catastrophic flooding, scorching heat waves with temperatures exceeding 50°C, and devastating wildfires.
The agency found that climate change added 41 days of dangerous heat in 2024, harming human health and ecosystems in their report When Risks Become Reality: Extreme Weather.
Climate change also intensified 26 of the 29 weather events studied by World Weather Attribution that killed at least 3700 people and displaced millions, WMO said.
Celeste Saulo, the WMO Secretary-General, described the year as a sobering wake-up call.
“This year we saw record-breaking rainfall and flooding events and terrible loss of life in so many countries, causing heartbreak to communities on every continent,” she stated.
Ms. Saulo said “Every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, impacts and risks,” she underscored.
The agency reported that despite the grim realities, the year 2024 saw notable advancements with the adoption of the Pact for the Future a landmark agreement to promote disarmament, financial reform, gender equality, and ethical technological innovation.
The COP29 UN climate conference also recently discussed ways to increase finance for poor countries to support them in coping with the impacts of extreme weather.
Developing countries are responsible for a small amount of historic carbon emissions, but as WMO research has highlighted, are being hit the hardest by extreme weather.
The group of experts represented 15 international organizations and 12 countries convened at WMO headquarters in December to advance a coordinated framework for tackling the growing threat of extreme heat in response to Mr. Guterres’s Call to Action on Extreme Heat.
WMO and the UNESCO aim to prioritize efforts to protect the cryosphere – the Earth’s frozen regions, critical to regulating global temperatures with 2025 designated as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.
The agency is advancing initiatives like the Global Greenhouse Gas Watch which aims to improve the monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) net fluxes globally.
By 2027, the organization also aims to ensure universal protection from hazardous environmental events through life-saving anticipatory systems currently developed in the Early Warnings for All programme.
Ms. Saulo reinforced the shared responsibility to act as she reflected on WMO’s upcoming 75th anniversary.
“If we want a safer planet, we must act now. It’s our responsibility. It’s a common responsibility, a global responsibility,” she added
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