As 2024 passes its midpoint, the global climate continues to push into uncharted territory.
Carbon Brief’s analysis indicates a 95% probability that this year will surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record in the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 dataset.
This projection emerges amid a series of climate extremes that have marked the first half of 2024.
In the latest “state of the climate” quarterly update, Carbon Brief assesses the first full six months of 2024 and finds:
- The first six months of 2024 have each set new temperature records, extending an already remarkable streak of 13 consecutive record-breaking months dating back to 2023.
- On 22 July, the world experienced its highest absolute global daily temperature on record, reaching a scorching 17.15C.
- The heat has been felt globally, with 63 countries experiencing their warmest June on record. Over the past 12 months, a staggering 138 countries have recorded their hottest temperatures ever.
- July 2024 is very likely to be the first time in 13 months without a new record, coming in cooler than July 2023. However, it will still be more than 0.2C warmer than any July prior to 2023.
- With El Niño fading and modest La Niña conditions potentially developing later this year, it is unlikely that the extreme monthly temperature records set in the second half of 2023 will be surpassed in 2024.
- Antarctic sea ice extent has fallen to near 2023’s record lows in recent weeks, reflecting the broader trend of polar sea ice loss.
Record warm first half of the year
Global temperatures set a new record for each of the first six months of 2024, extending what was already a string of seven record setting months in 2023.
All in all, each of the last 13 months has been the warmest since records began in the mid-1850s.
The figure below shows how global temperature so far in 2024 (purple line) compares to each month in different years since 1940 (with lines coloured by the decade in which they occurred) in the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 surface temperature dataset.
Temperatures for each month from 1940 to 2024 from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Global temperatures in the latter half of 2023 exceeded prior records by at least 0.3C, peaking in September when 2023 surpassed the previous September record by 0.5C. While 2024 has continued to set records, the margins have been smaller:
- January to April 2024: About 0.1C above previous records (set in 2016)
- May 2024: About 0.2C above the previous record (set in 2020)
- June 2024: About 0.15C above the previous record (set in 2023)
It is important to note that June 2024 is being compared to the already high temperatures set in 2023. Compared to the last major El Niño event in 2016, June 2024 was about 0.4C warmer.
The figure below shows the margin by which global temperatures were set in each of the prior 13 record-setting months.
Margin by which new monthly temperature records have been set over the past 13 months. Using data from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5. Chart by Carbon Brief.
In this latest quarterly state of the climate assessment, Carbon Brief analyses records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASA, NOAA, Met Office Hadley Centre/UEA, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF.
The figure below shows the annual temperatures from each of these groups since 1970, along with the average over the first six months of 2024. (Note: at the time of writing, June data was not yet available for the Hadley/UEA record.)
Annual global mean surface temperatures from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF (lines), along with 2024 temperatures so far (January-June, coloured dots). Anomalies plotted with respect to the 1981-2010 period, and shown relative to pre-industrial based on the average pre-industrial temperatures in the Hadley/UEA, NOAA and Berkeley datasets that extend back to 1850. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The globe, as a whole, has warmed more than 1C since 1970, with strong agreement between different global temperature records. However, there are larger differences between temperature records further back in time (particularly pre-1900) due to sparser observations and a resulting greater sensitivity to how gaps between measurements are filled in.
All show that the average global temperature for 2024 so far is higher than any prior annual record. However, annual temperatures may end up being a bit lower than those of the first six months of the year, as El Niño conditions have faded and a mild La Niña event is likely to develop later in the year.
The last two years – 2023 and 2024 – stand out as substantially warmer than any prior year in the temperature record. The chart below shows a heat map of daily global average temperatures in the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 dataset, with temperatures shown by colours ranging from blue (-2C) to red (+2C), with the pre-industrial average (1850-1900) set to 0C. The figure below shows each day since 1940 in the dataset.
A summer of temperature extremes
While global average surface temperature changes are an important indicator of long-term climate change, any month or year will have important regional warm or cool patterns in different parts of the world.
June 2024 saw particularly warm temperatures over much of South America, the southern US and Mexico, northern Africa, western Europe, central Asia and the Middle East among other regions.
The figure below shows the difference between temperatures in June 2024 and the baseline period of 1951-80, taken from Berkeley Earth (using their high-resolution temperature dataset). Red, orange and yellow shading indicate areas that have been warmer than average, while blue shows areas that have been cooler.
In total, 63 countries, mostly in Africa and South America, had their warmest national-average June on record. These included Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greece, Israel, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Nepal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela and Yemen.
The figure below shows which portions of the Earth’s surface experienced record high temperatures (deep red shading) in June 2024. It is noteworthy that almost no location on the planet experienced record cold temperatures.
Zooming out to the past 12 months (July 2023 to June 2024), 138 countries saw all-time records broken. This includes much of Central and South America, Canada, Africa, Europe, China, the Middle East and south-east Asia. Only an anomalous patch of east Antarctica saw record cold temperatures.
Very likely to be the warmest year on record
With half the year of data now available, Carbon Brief has determined that there is now an approximately 95% chance that 2024 will beat 2023 and be the warmest year on record, based on Copernicus/ECMWF’s ERA5 dataset. (Berkeley Earth separately estimated a 92% chance in their June update.)
By looking at the relationship between the first six months and the annual temperatures for every year since 1970 – as well as El Niño-Southern Oscillation conditions for the first six months of the year and projections for the remaining nine months – Carbon Brief has created a projection of what the final global average temperature for 2024 will likely turn out to be.
The analysis includes the estimated uncertainty in 2024 outcomes, given that temperatures from only the first half of the year are available so far.
The chart below shows the expected range of 2024 temperatures using the Copernicus/ECMWF global atmospheric reanalysis product (ERA5) – including a best-estimate (red) and year-to-date value (yellow). Temperatures are shown with respect to the pre-industrial baseline period (1850-1900).
Annual global average surface temperature anomalies from the Copernicus/ECMWF global atmospheric reanalysis product (ERA5) plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. To-date 2024 values include January-June. The estimated 2024 annual value is based on the relationship between the January-June temperatures and annual temperatures between 1970 and 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Carbon Brief’s projection suggests that 2024 is very likely to be the warmest year on record, with a central estimate of 1.57C.
This is true even if – as the projection implicitly assumes – the remaining months in 2024 are below the records set in 2023. Because the first six months of the year were so warm – around 1.63C above pre-industrial levels – the second half of the year would have to be relatively cool (below 1.3C) for the year as a whole to not exceed 2023.
It is worth repeating that an individual year hitting 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is not equivalent to the 1.5C limit within the Paris Agreement. This limit refers to long-term warming, rather than an individual year that includes the short-term influence of natural fluctuations in the climate, such as El Niño. Even including data through to the present day, long-term global temperatures (excluding year-to-year variability) are unlikely to exceed 1.5C until the late 2020s or early 2030s.
The figure below shows Carbon Brief’s estimate of 2024 temperatures using ERA5, both at the beginning of the year and once each month’s data has come in. The central estimate remained relatively unchanged until June, after which it increased a bit as the month turned out a bit warmer than the model anticipated. The uncertainty has diminished with each additional month of data, as there are fewer remaining months in 2024 to substantially change the results.
Carbon Brief’s projection of global temperatures at the start of the year, and after January, February, March, April, May, and June ERA5 data became available. Chart by Carbon Brief.
There is reason to expect that global temperature anomalies will modestly decline over the remainder of the year as El Niño fades away and moderate La Niña conditions potentially develop. The figure below shows a range of different forecast models for ENSO for the rest of this year, produced by different scientific groups. The values shown are sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific – the El Niño 3.4 region – for overlapping three-month periods.
There is a mix of projections across models, with many of the dynamical models expecting very modest La Niña conditions (<-0.5C Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature – SST – anomaly) to develop by October, while most of the statistical models expect ENSO-neutral conditions to persist.
July on track to end the record monthly streak
Global surface temperatures have set a 13-month streak of monthly records from June 2023 and June 2024. However, with more than two thirds of July temperature now available, it is looking increasingly likely that July 2024 will break that streak, coming in as the second warmest on record after July 2023.
The figure below shows daily temperature anomalies from the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 record for 2024 (purple line), 2023 (red line) and 1940-2022 (grey lines). It highlights that July 2024 has been at or below 2023 temperatures for all but the past few days.
Daily global temperature anomalies from 1940 to present (22 July 2024) from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5, with daily values for each year plotted as a separate line. The colours indicate 2024 (purple), 2023 (red) and all other years (grey). Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Current global temperature anomalies are back in record territory as of 22 July, at around 1.7C above pre-industrial levels.
This is still well below the anomalies of 2C or more briefly hit in late 2023 and early 2024. However, because the current temperature anomalies align with the warmest week of the year for global surface temperatures, they have resulted in a new record for absolute global temperatures. This is shown in the figure below, which features daily absolute global temperatures from the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5.
Daily global absolute temperatures from 1940 to present (22 July 2024) from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5, with daily values for each year plotted as a separate line. The colours indicate 2024 (purple), 2023 (red) and all other years (grey). Chart by Carbon Brief.
The prior daily absolute temperature record was 17.08C, set in early July 2023. This was exceeded both by 22 July (at 17.09C) and 22 July (at 17.15C).
While these daily absolute temperature records are not that climatically meaningful (and are only available in reanalysis data) – anomalies give a better sense of actual changes that are occurring – they nonetheless represent a symbolic milestone.
To determine where July 2024 temperatures will ultimately end up, Carbon Brief used a statistical model that extrapolates the final monthly temperatures based on the first 22 days of the month in all prior Julys since the ERA5 record began in 1940.
The figure below shows the expected range of July 2024 temperatures (black error bars) alongside a best-estimate (red diamond). Temperatures are shown with respect to the pre-industrial baseline period (1850-1900).
July global average surface temperature anomalies from the Copernicus/ECMWF global atmospheric reanalysis product (ERA5) plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. The estimated 2024 July value is based on the relationship between the first 21 days of the month and the final monthly temperatures between 1940 and 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Here, Carbon Brief estimates that there is a very likely (>95%) chance that July 2024 comes in as the second-warmest July on record after 2023. However, it will still be quite warm, at more than 0.2C warmer than any July prior to 2023.
The extreme heat the world experienced in the latter half of 2023 makes setting new records over the remainder of the year less likely.
Low Antarctic sea ice extent
Antarctic sea ice extent spent much of early 2024 at the low end of the historical 1979-2010 range, though it has not quite exceeded record lows experienced in 2023.
However, in recent weeks Antarctic sea ice extent has rapidly dropped, and is now only modestly above 2023 levels.
Arctic sea ice extent has also spent most of this year at the low end of the historical range.
The figure below shows both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2024 (solid red and blue lines), the historical range in the record between 1979 and 2010 (shaded areas) and the record lows (dotted black line). Unlike global temperature records (which only report monthly averages), sea ice data is collected and updated on a daily basis, allowing sea ice extent to be viewed up to the present.
Arctic and Antarctic daily sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. The bold lines show daily 2024 values, the shaded area indicates the two standard deviation range in historical values between 1979 and 2010. The dotted black lines show the record lows for each pole. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The post State of the climate: 2024 now very likely to be warmest year on record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: 2024 now very likely to be warmest year on record
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The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
Amid reports that the government could weaken the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) targets, Carbon Brief analysis reveals the nation’s EV drivers are saving more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared with running a petrol car.
Battery EVs (BEVs) are roughly four times more efficient than combustion-engine cars, making them far cheaper to run – particularly since the Iran crisis caused a spike in fossil-fuel prices.
The savings from driving BEVs are also more than three times higher than for “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs), which evidence shows are mostly driven with their combustion engines.
In total, the more than 2m BEVs, 1m PHEVs and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are saving drivers around £3bn a year, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows, as illustrated in the figure below.
In addition, these EVs are avoiding the need for nearly 2.5bn litres of fuel and cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 7m tonnes each year.
Despite recent news that EVs are now cheaper to buy than petrol cars, as well as having far lower running costs, BBC News says the government is “set to water down” its EV sales targets.
The broadcaster explains that the current goal, under the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, is for 80% of new car sales to be BEVs by 2030.
It says that the government is set to consult on weakening this to between 50% and 70%, following “lobbying” by carmakers and trade unions.
According to the Sunday Times, prime minister Keir Starmer “is understood to have overruled the energy secretary [Ed Miliband] after sustained pressure from industry, the Unite union and Peter Kyle, the business secretary”.
The car industry has consistently claimed there is insufficient demand for BEVs to meet the targets under the ZEV mandate, yet the government says manufacturers have “over-complied” to date. Independent analysts say the industry is on track to continue beating the ZEV mandate goals.
The industry has been able to beat its targets by using a wide range of “flexibilities”, which were introduced after a previous round of lobbying. These allow carmarkers to meet part of their EV targets by selling more efficient combustion cars, such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The ZEV mandate is the single-largest part of the government’s plans to meet its legally binding climate goals over the next decade.
The advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) previously warned that the extra flexibilities would result in a larger number of hybrids being sold, at the expense of battery EVs.
When it consulted on the ZEV mandate in 2023, the then-Conservative government noted that PHEVs do not deliver the cost and CO2 savings they are advertised with.
It pointed to “dramatic” differences between the performance of PHEVs in test cycles and what they deliver under real-world conditions.
In practice, less than a third of miles driven in PHEVs are fuelled by electricity, with petrol making up the rest. As a result, cost and CO2 savings from BEVs are three times larger than for PHEVs.
The post Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total
Civil society groups have called for an investigation into the first carbon credits approved under a new UN mechanism, alleging the project is linked to Myanmar’s military junta – which the UN says is guilty of human rights abuses – and has “massively” overstated its climate impact.
The programme, which aims to cut emissions by distributing efficient cookstoves across Myanmar, received approval to issue around 650,000 carbon credits from the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in February, in a landmark moment for the Paris Agreement’s carbon market. Only two projects have been given the green light by the mechanism’s regulator so far.
But two reports published last week, led by the Global Forest Coalition and Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch, raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in conflict zones where civilians have faced airstrikes and mass displacement as well as its emission-reduction calculations.
Project continued after military coup
Myanmar has been ravaged by a brutal civil war since the country’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup d’état in February 2021. The military regime has attacked civilian populations, persecuted ethnic minorities and committed widespread sexual violence, among other serious human rights violations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said in April.
The cookstove programme started in 2018 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – as a partnership between Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and the Climate Change Center (CCC), a South Korean NGO, with investment from private South Korean firms.
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The project continued operating after the coup. For most of the period between 2021 and 2022 in which the issued credits were generated, MONREC was led by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2021 for supporting the military regime, the Global Forest Coalition report said.
CCC acknowledged engaging with government authorities after the coup but said this “should not be interpreted as political endorsement” of the junta. The South Korean NGO added that abandoning the programme when political circumstances changed “would not necessarily have been the most responsible outcome for the households involved”.
Conflict prevents on the ground verification
The Global Forest Coalition report raised particular concerns about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, an anti-junta resistance stronghold that has been most heavily affected by the conflict and routinely targeted by airstrikes and violent attacks. The region accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s 3.8 million internally displaced people.
The NGOs said that, in addition to ethical concerns about carbon credits being produced by the military government in an area actively affected by its attacks, this raises questions over the ability to effectively verify the climate integrity of the projects.
Before carbon credits are issued, external auditors need to validate the claims made by project developers and confirm that the emission reductions claimed are correct. This process usually includes site visits to a representative sample of households to check how the improved cookstoves are being used.
But, because of the “volatile political situation” in Myanmar, the auditing team was not able to leave the capital Yangon and could only speak to project participants remotely via Zoom, project documents show.
“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent,” said Zaw Tuseng, founder and president of the Myanmar Policy Institute, which contributed to the report, in a written statement. “This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted.”
“Exceptional circumstances”
CCC told Climate Home News that, although it recognises that on-site verification is “generally preferable, particularly in complex operating environments”, the decision to opt for remote controls was not taken “as a discretionary shortcut, but as an approved alternative under exceptional circumstances”.
The South Korean NGO added that it reviewed the feasibility of the project at community level “on an ongoing basis” and it “did not identify conflict-related incidents that directly affected project implementation activities in participating communities during the monitoring period”.
A spokesperson for the UN climate change body told Climate Home News that, when site access is not possible, the UN carbon credit mechanism allows for “alternative verification approaches while still maintaining conservative assumptions and environmental integrity safeguards”. “These provisions ensure that crediting can only proceed where evidence is reliable,” they added.
Contested methodology
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods, both reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. But several cookstove offsetting projects have faced criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
The project in Myanmar uses a contested methodology developed under the earlier Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it found it “insufficiently rigorous”.
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After transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project was required to apply “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, which resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued, according to the UN climate change body.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism, said in February.
Too many credits issued
But Carbon Market Watch claimed in a second report last week that, despite the adjustment, the project is still likely to issue seven times more credits than its real climate impact justifies, comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The biggest driver of the credit inflation, the group said, is the failure to account for “stacking” – the widespread practice of households using multiple stoves at the same time, including more polluting ones the project does not monitor.
Peer-reviewed science considers a stacking rate of 68% a conservative assumption, but the methodology used by the Myanmar programme makes no allowance for it at all, the report said.
CCC disputed those findings. In a written response to Climate Home News, it said the project was developed under methodologies approved within the UN climate framework and that external recalculations by researchers are not “determinative of the level of crediting achieved”.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its own national climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
“Over-crediting, at any magnitude, cannot be compatible with the climate ambition of a world striving to limit global warming to 1.5ºC,” said Isa Mulder, an expert at Carbon Market Watch.
The post UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns
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