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It\u2019s \u201cvirtually certain\u201d that 2024 will go down in the books as the hottest year yet. The planet is on track to pass a worrying threshold when it comes to global average temperatures, warns the European Union\u2019s\u00a0Copernicus Climate Change Service.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After a scorching summer<\/a>, and with countries making slow progress<\/a> on climate change, it\u2019s not too surprising that 2024 is going to be off the charts. Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are pushing temperatures higher, forcing communities around the world to adapt to harsh new realities. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHumanity\u2019s torching the planet and paying the price.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s been a year of anomalies. More than\u00a01,300 people died<\/a>\u00a0as temperatures soared in Saudi Arabia during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in June. At the time, the Northern Hemisphere was in the middle of its hottest summer on record<\/a>, beating 2023. While that\u2019s based on a Copernicus analysis of data stretching back to 1940, separate\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0using markers in ancient tree rings found that the summer of 2023 in the Northern hemisphere was probably the\u00a0hottest in at least 2,000 years<\/a>. (Unfortunately, there\u2019s\u00a0less of this data available<\/a> in more arid and tropical regions in the Southern Hemisphere.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is likely also the first year that global average temperatures have risen more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than they were before the industrial revolution. That might not sound like much, but it exceeds the most ambitious target set in the Paris climate accord<\/a> \u2014 an international treaty to keep warming from surpassing 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius over the long term. Our planet\u2019s climate remained relatively stable for the last 11,000 years<\/a> or so, supporting the rise of agriculture and civilization as we know it, until the industrial revolution. The Paris agreement aims to keep global temperatures within roughly the same temperature range<\/a>. But without a transition to cleaner energy to get rid greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, global temperatures will continue to rise. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n