Last year was the hottest the Earth has experienced since the start of global temperature records in the mid-1800s – and likely for many thousands of years before.
The year 2024 was the first in which average global temperatures at the surface of the planet exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the majority of leading datasets.
While reaching 1.5C in an individual year is not equivalent to a breach of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit – which refers to long-term warming – it nevertheless indicates that the world is quickly approaching this internationally agreed threshold.
Here, Carbon Brief examines the latest data across the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature. (Use the links below to navigate between sections.)
Noteworthy findings from this 2024 review include…
- Global surface temperatures: It was the warmest year on record by a large margin – at between 1.46C and 1.62C above pre-industrial levels across different temperature datasets and 1.55C in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) synthesis.
- Exceptional monthly temperatures: Global temperatures set a new record each month between January and June, extending a 15-month record-setting stretch which began in 2023.
- Warmest over land: Global temperatures over the world’s land regions – where humans live and primarily experience climate impacts – were a record 2.3C above pre-industrial levels.
- Warmest over oceans: Global sea surface temperatures set a new record at 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.
- Ocean heat content: It was the warmest year on record for ocean heat content. In 2024, the oceans added 25 times more heat than all annual human energy use.
- Regional warming: It was the warmest year on record in more than 100 countries – including China, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Malaysia and South Korea – and in areas where a total of 3.3 billion people live.
- Unusual warmth: The specific causes behind the exceptionally warm, record-setting temperatures in both 2023 and 2024 remain an open scientific question, with human-caused greenhouse gases, variability in El Niño and changes in the reflectivity of clouds all playing a role.
- Comparison with climate models: Observations for 2024 are above the central estimate of climate model projections in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report, but well within the model range.
- Heating of the atmosphere: It was the warmest year in the lower troposphere – the lowest part of the atmosphere – by a large margin.
- Sea level rise: Sea levels reached new record highs, with notable acceleration over the past three decades.
- Shrinking glaciers and ice sheets: Cumulative ice loss from the world’s glaciers and from the Greenland ice sheet reached a new record high in 2024, contributing to sea level rise.
- Greenhouse gases: Concentrations reached record levels for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.
- Sea ice extent: Arctic sea ice saw its seventh-lowest minimum extent on record, while Antarctic sea ice was at the second-lowest level on record for much of the year.
- Looking ahead to 2025: Carbon Brief predicts that global average surface temperatures in 2025 are likely to be the third warmest on record after 2024 and 2023, at around 1.4C above pre-industrial levels. However, large uncertainties remain given how exceptionally and unexpectedly warm the past two years have been.
Record warm surface temperatures
Global surface temperatures set a new record in 2024, surpassing the record set in 2023 by around 0.11C. It was unambiguously the warmest year since records began in the mid-1800s. 2024 was far warmer than any year prior to 2023, exceeding the previous record (set in 2016) by a massive 0.26C.
The figure below shows global surface temperature records from five different datasets: NASA, NOAA, the Met Office Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia’s (UEA) HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus ERA5.
Other surface temperature datasets not shown – including JRA-3Q, the AIRS satellite data and the Japanese Meteorological Agency – also show 2024 as the warmest year on record.
Annual global average surface temperatures over 1850-2024. Data from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus ERA5. Temperature records are aligned over the 1981-2010 period and use the WMO approach to calculate warming relative to the pre-industrial (1850-1900) baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Global surface temperature records can be calculated back to 1850, though some groups such as NASA GISTEMP choose to start their records in 1880 when more data was available.
Prior to 1850, records exist for some specific regions, but are not sufficiently widespread to calculate global temperatures with high accuracy (though work is ongoing to identify and digitise additional records to extend these further back in time).
These longer surface temperature records are created by combining ship- and buoy-based measurements of ocean sea surface temperatures with temperature readings of the surface air temperature from weather stations on land. (Copernicus ERA5 and JRA-3Q are an exception, as they use weather model-based reanalysis to combine lots of different data sources over time.)
Some differences between temperature records are apparent early in the record, particularly prior to 1900 when observations are more sparse and results are more sensitive to how different groups fill in the gaps between observations. However, there is strong agreement between the different temperature records for the period since 1970, as shown in the figure below.
Annual global average surface temperatures as in the prior chart, but showing the period from 1970-2024. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Global temperatures in 2024 clearly stand out as much warmer than anything that has come before, above even the exceptionally warm temperatures of 2023. This can be seen in the figure below from Berkeley Earth. Each shaded curve represents the annual average temperature for that year. The further that curve is to the right, the warmer it was.
The width of each year’s curve reflects the uncertainty in the annual temperature values, which is caused by factors such as changes in measurement techniques and the fact that some parts of the world have fewer measurement locations than others.
The year 2024 was the warmest on record for both the world’s land and ocean regions. Global average land temperatures were around 2.3C above pre-industrial levels in the Berkeley Earth dataset, while global ocean temperatures exceeded 1.1C.
The figure below shows land (red) and ocean (blue) temperatures along with their respective confidence intervals, relative to pre-industrial levels, in the Berkeley Earth surface temperature record.
Global land regions – where the global human population lives – has been warming around 70% faster than the oceans – and 40% faster than the global average in the years since 1970.
2024 started off quite hot, boosted by an El Niño event that peaked at the start of the year. The first six months of the year set new all-time monthly records, extending a run of 15 record-setting months that started in July 2023. The latter part of the year remained warm, and was only slightly exceeded by the exceptionally hot temperatures experienced in the second half of 2023.
The figure below shows each month of 2024 in black, compared to all prior years since 1940. Each year is coloured based on the decade in which it occurred, with the clear warming over time visible, as well as the margin by which both 2023 and 2024 exceeded past years.
Monthly global surface temperatures for each year since 1940, with anomalies shown relative to the pre-industrial 1850-1900 period using data from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5. Chart by Carbon Brief.
First year above 1.5C in most records
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to work to limit global temperatures to “well below 2C” and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.
While the agreement did not specifically define how to measure the breach of these climate targets, the goals have been widely interpreted (including by the IPCC) to refer to temperature averages over 20 years.
In other words, the limits refer 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.
However, a single year exceeding 1.5C still represents a grim milestone and a sign that the world is quickly approaching the target. And, in the majority of datasets in 2024, global surface temperatures exceeded 1.5C for the first time. (In the Berkeley Earth dataset, 2023 was actually the first year above 1.5C.)
| Temperature record | 2024 temperatures relative to preindustrial |
|---|---|
| NASA GISTEMP | 1.47C |
| Hadley/UAE HadCRUT5 | 1.53C |
| NOAA GlobalTemp | 1.46C |
| Berkeley Earth | 1.62C |
| Copernicus/ECMWF | 1.60C |
| JRA-3Q | 1.59C |
| Japanese Meteorological Agency | 1.52C |
Global temperature anomalies for 2024 relative to pre-industrial temperatures (1850-1900).
NOAA and NASA were the only organisations to report global temperatures below 1.5C – and by just a few hundredths of a degree. Berkeley Earth, Copernicus and JRA-3Q all estimated that temperatures were around 1.6C.
This year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provided a synthesis of the different global surface temperature records – incorporating NASA, Hadley, NOAA, Berkeley, Copernicus and JRA-3Q data – which is a useful tool to provide a best-estimate across the different groups. It finds that 2024 was the first year above 1.5C, coming in at 1.55C compared to 1.45C in 2023.
The figure below shows various temperature records along with their published uncertainty range (where available), alongside the WMO synthesis estimate.
As noted earlier, these datasets are nearly identical over the past 50 years. Differences in warming relative to pre-industrial levels emerge earlier in the record, particularly prior to 1900 when observations are more sparse and the choice of how to fill in the gaps between observations has a large impact on the resulting temperature estimate.
The figure below shows how different temperature records look if each is calculated relative to its own pre-industrial baseline, rather than using an average pre-industrial baseline as shown in the prior section. Focusing on warming since pre-industrial levels – rather than more recent warming – magnifies differences between groups, with the variation in warming across groups largely due to the most uncertain early part of the record.
Ocean heat content sets another record
Last year was the warmest on record for the heat content of the world’s oceans. Ocean heat content (OHC) has increased by around 484 zettajoules – a billion trillion joules – since the 1940s. The heat increase in 2024 alone compared to 2023 – about 16 zettajoules – is around 25 times as much as the total energy produced by all human activities on Earth in 2023 (the latest year in which global primary energy statistics are available).
Human-emitted greenhouse gases trap extra heat in the atmosphere. While some of this warms the Earth’s surface, the vast majority – around of 93% – goes into the oceans. About two-thirds of this accumulates in the top 700 metres, but some also ends up in the deep oceans.
The figure below shows annual OHC estimates between 1950 and present for the upper 700 metres (light blue shading) and 700-2,000 metres (dark blue) of the ocean.
Annual global ocean heat content (in zettajoules – billion trillion joules, or 10^21 joules) for the 0-700 metre and 700-2,000 metre layers. Data from Cheng et al. (2024). Chart by Carbon Brief.
In many ways, OHC represents a much better measure of climate change than global average surface temperatures, because it is where most of the extra heat ends up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface temperatures.
The graph above shows a distinct acceleration in OHC after 1991, matching the increased rate of greenhouse gas emissions and other radiative forcing elements over the past few decades.
A year of climate extremes
While media coverage of 2024 temperatures has largely focused on the global average, many different regions of the planet experienced climate extremes.
The figure below shows global temperature anomalies in 2024 across the world, with the red areas warmer than the baseline period (1951-80) used by Berkeley Earth and the (few) blue areas experiencing cooler temperatures.
Approximately 3.3 billion people – 40% of Earth’s population – live in places that experienced their warmest year on record in 2024. This was concentrated in Asia, South and Central America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. It also includes two-thirds of the population of China, as well as most of the population of Brazil, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mexico and one-third of the population of the US.
The figure below highlights regions of the planet that experienced their top-five warmest (red shading) or coldest (blue) temperatures on record in 2024. Overall, around 24% of the planet set a new record, including 32% of the land and 21% of the ocean. No location on the planet experienced record cold temperatures (or even top-five record cold temperatures) for the year as a whole.
In 2024, more than 100 countries saw their warmest year on record, as listed in the table below.
| Africa | Asia | Europe | North America | Oceania | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algeria Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Ivory Coast Kenya Liberia Libya Malawi Mozambique Republic of the Congo Sao Tome and Principe Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Sudan Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe |
Brunei Cambodia China Indonesia Laos Malaysia Mongolia North Korea Oman Palau Philippines Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Vietnam Yemen |
Albania Austria Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Germany Greece Hungary Italy Kosovo Liechtenstein Lithuania Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands Poland San Marino Republic of Serbia Romania Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine |
Antigua and Barbuda Barbados Belize Canada Dominica El Salvador Grenada Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago |
Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Kiribati Samoa Solomon Islands |
Brazil Colombia Guyana Paraguay Suriname Venezuela |
While the contiguous US saw record warmth, 2024 was the country’s second-warmest year on record once Alaska and Hawaii temperatures are included.
Furthermore, the continents of North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe each set new annual average records in 2024.
Untangling the drivers of spiking global temperatures
Global temperatures spiked in both 2023 and 2024 in a manner that scientists had not anticipated. Projections of 2023 temperatures were far below what actually occurred, and even 2024 projections ended up being on the lower end, despite incorporating 2023’s extremes.
The figure below shows estimates by four different groups that provided temperature predictions for the year prior to any data being collected – the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief’s own estimate.
Temperature predictions for 2024 from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth, and Carbon Brief relative to pre-industrial (1850-1900) temperatures and compared to the historical average of six different datasets produced by the WMO. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Unusually high global temperatures in 2023 and 2024 have sparked a slew of new studies by scientists attempting to explain the excessive heat. A range of possible causes has been proposed, including:
- The possibility that El Niño behaved unusually as it followed a rare extended triple-dip La Niña event. A 2024 paper found that when El Niño followed an extended La Niña in climate model simulations, it produced a temperature spike commensurate to what was observed in 2023-24 around 10% of the time.
- A decline in emissions of sulphur dioxide, reducing atmospheric aerosol concentrations and “unmasking” additional warming from past human greenhouse gas emissions. Multiple different papers have looked at the effects of a 2020 low-sulphur marine shipping fuel regulation, and ongoing research is looking at the effects of a sharp drop in sulphur emissions in China.
- An unusual 2022 eruption of the Hunga-Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano that put around 150m tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere, as well as some sulphur dioxide. Papers have been mixed on whether the water vapour warming or the sulphur dioxide cooling would be larger.
- Other factors include an uptick in the 11-year solar cycle, and unusually low Saharan dust concentrations in early summer 2023.
One notable paper, published in the journal Science in early December 2024, found a substantial decline in reflective low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics. They noted that this has the effect of increasing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface and is re-radiated as heat.
The finding by itself does not reveal what caused a decline in cloud reflectivity, and the authors note that it could be a combination of natural variability, declining atmospheric aerosol concentrations associated with falling sulfur emissions, or – more worryingly – a sign of a strong positive cloud feedback associated with warming.
The figure below, created by Dr Robert Rohde at Berkeley Earth, synthesises the main drivers of temperature change over the past decade. It includes estimates of the warming contribution from human greenhouse gas emissions, El Niño and La Niña, changes in the solar cycle, the Hunga-Tonga eruption, and the 2020 low-sulphur marine fuel regulations. For the latter two elements, it includes a range of six published estimates of the eruption and five published estimates of the low sulphur fuel rules.
Over the longer-term, human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases alongside planet-cooling aerosols are the main driver of global temperatures. Global temperatures have risen by more than 1.3C since pre-industrial times as a result of human activity.
However, on top of long-term warming, global temperatures vary year-to-year by up to 0.2C.
These variations are primarily driven by El Niño and La Niña events that redistribute heat between the atmosphere and oceans. However, other factors such as volcanic eruptions, the 11-year solar cycle and changes in short-lived climate forcers can influence year-to-year temperature changes.
The figure below shows the El Niño (red shading) and La Niña (blue) conditions over the past 40 years (collectively referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO”). While not unprecedented, the extended La Niña conditions since the latter half of 2020 have extended for an unusually long period of time.
Carbon Brief has used this historical relationship between ENSO conditions and temperature to effectively remove the effects of El Niño and La Niña events from global temperatures, as shown in the figure below.
This analysis indicates that El Niño boosted global temperatures in 2024 by around 0.16C compared to the estimate of global temperatures with both El Niño and La Niña events removed. This was a much larger effect than the 0.04C estimated for 2023, when El Niño emerged relatively late in the year and peaked in November.
Annual global average surface temperatures from the WMO average of six different datasets , as well as Carbon Brief’s estimate of global temperatures with the effect of El Niño and La Niña (ENSO) events removed using the Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) approach. Chart by Carbon Brief.
However, this approach – which relies on a historical lag of around three months between peak ENSO conditions in the tropical Pacific and global surface temperature response – may not fully reflect El Niño effects on 2023. As discussed earlier, the fact that El Niño occurred on the heels of unusually-long La Niña conditions may have contributed to an earlier global temperature response than has been seen in other recent strong El Niño events.
Observations broadly in line with climate model projections
Climate models provide physics-based estimates of future warming given different assumptions about future emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations and other climate-influencing factors.
Here, Carbon Brief examines a collection of climate models – known as CMIP6 – used in the 2021 science report of the IPCC’s sixth assessment. In CMIP6, model estimates of temperatures prior to 2015 are a “hindcast” using known past climate influences, while temperatures projected from 2015 onward are a “forecast” based on an estimate of how things might change.
The figure below shows how observations compare to the full ensemble of 37 CMIP6 models (under the middle-of-the-road SSP2-4.5 emissions scenario for future projections). The blue line represents the average of all the models and the grey areas showing the 5th to 95th percentile range. Observational temperatures are plotted on top of the climate model data, with individual observational records represented by red lines of different shades.
The chart illustrates how observations have generally been below the model average over the past two decades and are slightly above model average in 2024.
Annual global average surface temperatures from CMIP6 models and observations between 1950 and 2030 (through 2024 for observations). Models use the SSP2-4.5 scenario after 2015. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The CMIP6 ensemble is marginally more challenging for this comparison than past generations of CMIP because a subset of its models have unrealistically high climate sensitivity and they reproduce historical observations poorly. To account for this, rather than simply averaging all the models – as had been done in prior assessments – the IPCC employed an approach that effectively weights models by their performance. As a result, the models align better with the range of climate sensitivity derived from multiple different lines of evidence.
In the chart below, the blue line shows the average of 22 different models whose transient climate response (TCR) falls within the IPCC’s “likely” range (which results in temperature projections nearly identical to the IPCC-assessed warming). The grey area shows the 95% (two standard deviation) range of the TCR-screened model projections.
CMIP6 models compared to observations as in the prior chart, but models are screened to only include those models with a transient climate response (TCR) in-line with the IPCC’s “likely” range as discussed in Hausfather et al (2022). Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The chart reveals that observed global surface temperatures (red lines) are further above the multimodal average, but remain well within the range of TCR-screened model runs.
This might be surprising given the focus on 2023 and 2024 being unusually warm. However, climate models broadly expect an acceleration of warming in the current period in a scenario like SSP2-4.5 where emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to modestly increase, but emissions of planet-cooling aerosols like sulphur dioxide are rapidly reduced.
Record atmospheric temperatures
In addition to surface measurements over the world’s land and oceans, satellite microwave sounding units have been providing estimates of temperatures at various layers of the atmosphere since 1979.
The lowest layer of the atmosphere that satellite microwave units provide temperature estimates for is the lower troposphere. This data reflects temperatures a few kilometres above the Earth’s surface. It reveals a pattern of warming in the lowest troposphere that is similar – though not identical – to surface temperature changes.
The records produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) and NOAA show 2024 as the warmest year on record in the lower troposphere. The chart below shows the three records for the lower troposphere.
Global average lower-troposphere temperatures from RSS version 4 (blue), UAH version 6 (red) and NOAA STAR version 5 (grey) for the period from 1979-2024, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The lower troposphere tends to be influenced more strongly by El Niño and La Niña events than the surface. Therefore, satellite records show correspondingly larger warming or cooling spikes during these events. This explains why the year-on-year increase in lower-troposphere temperature – of around 0.3C – seen in 2024 is larger than the ~0.1C increase in surface records.
The lower-tropospheric temperature records show large differences after the early 2000s. RSS shows an overall rate of warming quite similar to surface temperature records, while UAH and NOAA show considerably slower warming in recent years than has been observed on the surface.
Greenhouse gas concentrations reach new highs
Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new high in 2024, driven by human emissions from fossil fuels, land use and agriculture.
Three greenhouse gases – CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) – are responsible for the bulk of additional heat trapped by human activities. CO2 is by far the largest factor, accounting for roughly 42% of the increase in global surface temperatures since the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).
Methane accounts for 28%, while nitrous oxide accounts for around 5%. The remaining 25% comes from other factors including carbon monoxide, black carbon and halocarbons, such as CFCs.
Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide to their highest levels in at least a few million years – if not longer.
The figure below shows concentrations of these greenhouse gases – in parts per million (ppm) for CO2 and parts per billion (ppb) for methane and nitrous oxide – from the early 1980s through to October 2024 for CO2 and September 2024 for CH4 and N2O (the most recent data currently available).
Global concentrations of CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Based on data from NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory. Note that the y-axes do not start at zero. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Sea level rise is speeding up
Modern-day sea levels have risen to a new high, due to a combination of melting land ice (such as glaciers and ice sheets), the thermal expansion of water as it warms and changes in land water storage.
In recent years, there have been larger contributions to sea level rise from melting ice sheets and glaciers, as warmer temperatures accelerate ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica.
Since the early 1990s, the increase in global sea level has been estimated using altimeter data from satellites. Earlier global sea levels have been reconstructed from a network of global tide gauge measurements. This allows researchers to estimate how sea level has changed since the late 1800s.
The chart below shows five different modern sea level rise datasets (blue lines), along with satellite altimeter measurements as assessed by NASA (in black) after 1993. (As sea level rise data has not yet been released for the whole year, the 2024 value is estimated based on data through to October.)
Global average sea level rise reconstructed from tide gauge data between 1880 and 2024 from Frederikse et al 2020, Dangendorf et al 2019, Hay et al 2015, Church and White 2011, and Palmer et al 2021. Satellite altimeter data from 1993 (black) to present is taken from NASA. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Sea levels have risen by over 0.2 metres (200mm) since 1900. While sea level rise estimates mostly agree in recent decades, larger divergences are evident before 1980. There is also evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the post-1993 period when high-quality satellite altimetry data is available. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on how climate change is accelerating sea level rise.)
Shrinking glaciers and ice sheets
A significant portion of global sea level rise is being driven by melting glaciers on land. Scientists measure the mass of glaciers around the world using a variety of remote-sensing techniques, as well as through GRACE measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field. The balance between snow falling on a glacier and ice loss through melting and the breaking off – or “calving” – of icebergs determines if glaciers grow or shrink over time.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service is an international consortium that tracks more than 130 different glaciers in 19 different regions around the world. The figure below shows the change in global average glacier mass from 1950 through to the end of 2023. (2024 values are not yet available.) Note that glacier melt is reported in metres of water equivalent, which is a measure of how much mass has been lost on average.
Global average glacier melt over the 1950-2023 period from the World Glacier Monitoring Service, in metres of water equivalent. Carbon Brief.
Greenland ice sheets have become a larger contributor to sea level rise in recent years due to accelerating loss of mass. The year 2024 was the 28th in a row where Greenland lost ice overall, with 80bn tonnes of ice lost over the 12 months from September 2023 to August 2024. Greenland last saw an annual net gain of ice in 1996.
The figure below shows the cumulative mass balance change – that is, the net ice loss – from Greenland between 1970 and October 2024. The authors find that Greenland has lost around 6tn tonnes of ice over the past 50 years – more than 700 tonnes lost per person for every person on the planet.
Cumulative ice loss from Greenland in billion metric tonnes (gigatonnes) between 1970 and 2024 from Mankoff et al 2021, updated through December 2024. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Near-record low Antarctic sea ice extent
Arctic sea ice was at the low end of the historical (1979-2010) range for most of 2024, but did not set any new all-time low records apart from a few individual days at the end of the year.
The summer minimum extent – the lowest recorded level for the year – was the seventh-lowest since records began in the late 1970s.
Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, was the second lowest on record – after 2023 – for much of the year. Taken together, 2023 and 2024 Antarctic sea ice extent was “way outside anything we have witnessed in our satellite record for their winter months”, an expert told Carbon Brief in October last year.
While long-term trends in Antarctic sea ice have been ambiguous in the past (unlike in the Arctic where there is a consistent long-term decline), there is increasing evidence that human-driven warming is starting to drive significant loss of sea ice in the region.
The figure below shows both Arctic (red line) and Antarctic (blue line) sea ice extent for each day of the year, along with how it compares to the historical range (corresponding shading).
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.
Looking ahead to 2025
There is reason for caution when estimating likely temperatures for 2025. In 2023, temperatures were significantly higher than predictions made at the start of the year, while 2024 temperatures were towards the high end of annual predictions.
At the same time, there is strong reason to expect that 2025 will be cooler than 2024. As noted earlier, 2024 temperatures were boosted by more than 0.1C by a strong El Niño event that has largely faded by the start of 2025. While global land temperatures remain quite elevated, sea surface temperatures have begun to fall in recent months, and weak La Niña conditions are starting to develop in the tropical Pacific.
It seems unlikely that a strong La Niña will develop in 2025, and it is quite possible that the world remains in ENSO neutral conditions with no formal La Niña being declared for the first half of the year. There is even a small chance that the world will re-enter El Niño conditions by the latter part of 2025 – though most models forecast neutral conditions to persist, as shown in the figure below.
There have been four published predictions – from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief (in this article) – of what temperatures might look like in 2025.
The figure below shows the four different 2025 predictions compared to the average of six different temperature records (NASA, NOAA, Hadley, Berkeley, Copernicus and the Japanese JRA-3Q reanalysis) used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These have been “normalised” to show 2025 warming relative to 2024 in the WMO dataset. This is to remove any differences in predictions due to divergences in the baselines used by different temperature records.
Carbon Brief’s prediction of likely 2025 temperatures is based on a statistical model using the average temperature of the past year, the latest monthly temperature and projections of ENSO conditions over the first three months of 2025.
Temperature projections for 2025 from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief, relative to pre-industrial (1850-1900) temperatures and compared to the historical average of six different datasets produced by the WMO. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The Met Office, Dr Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief estimates all have 2025 most likely ending up as the third-warmest year on record, after 2024 and 2023. However, it is still possible that it could be as high as the second-warmest year or as low as the sixth-warmest year, depending on how global temperatures evolve in the coming months.
Against a 1880-99 pre-industrial baseline, the central estimate of all four forecasts for 2025 is around 1.4C warming, with the world relatively unlikely to top 1.5C again next year.
Ultimately, what matters for the climate is not the leaderboard of individual years. Rather, it is the long-term upward trend in global temperatures driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Until the world reduces emissions down to net-zero, the planet will continue to warm.
If global emissions remain on the current trajectory, the world will likely firmly pass 1.5C in the late 2020s or early 2030s, as shown in the figure below.
Annual global average surface temperatures from the composite average (black dots) along the 30-year LOWESS fit (red line), combined the AR6 assessed warming projection for SSP2-4.5 as published and without any baseline alignment. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The post State of the climate: 2024 sets a new record as the first year above 1.5C appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: 2024 sets a new record as the first year above 1.5C
Greenhouse Gases
China Briefing 23 January 2025: China’s climate ‘concern’ over Trump; Peak oil debate; China’s energy storage lead
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Key developments
China reaffirmed climate stance
TRUMP WITHDRAWS: A government spokesperson said China’s “resolve and actions to actively respond to climate change will remain unchanged” at a press conference on 21 January. Asked by the New York Times to respond to president Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement again, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said China was “concerned” and that “China will work with all parties to…promote a global green and low-carbon transition for the shared future of humanity”, state-supporting Global Times reported. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, China’s vice premier Ding Xuexiang reiterated that the world needs to “jointly tackle global challenges”, including climate change and energy security, said the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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BYE BYE BIDEN: Before leaving the White House, outgoing US president Joe Biden urged his successor to “tackle China’s ‘overcapacity’ and dominance in clean-energy supply chains, calling it a competition the US ‘must win’”, SCMP reported. Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, wrote in the New York Times that “it is no secret China wants to dominate the global market” for electric vehicles (EV) under the headline: “China will be thrilled if Trump kills America’s green economy.” One of the Biden administration’s last moves was finalising rules that will “effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars and trucks” from the US, said Reuters. He also barred five Chinese solar companies – allegedly using forced labour in Xinjiang – from entering the US market, reported the New York Times. The move has led to criticism from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which denied the forced labour claims, said BJX News. BBC News reported that tariffs from the US, Canada and the EU could force China to turn to “emerging markets”, but as the new markets “don’t have the same levels of demand…that could impact Chinese businesses that are hoping to expand, in turn hitting suppliers of energy and raw materials”. A comment for Dialogue Earth by analysts at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said emerging markets in the global south are already driving China’s export growth.
New UK, EU-China geopolitical situation
REEVES IN BEIJING: UK chancellor Rachel Reeves visited China between 10-13 January and “secured benefits worth up to £1bn for the UK economy”, reported the Guardian. According to a UK government document, both sides agreed to “deeper cooperation across areas such as financial services, trade, investment and the climate to support secure growth”, while also agreeing on “strengthening the existing UK-China clean energy partnership”. An unbylined comment piece in China’s state-supporting Global Times said that “China-UK relations have shown signs of warming up”. It added that Reeves responded that the UK would “make decisions in our national interest” when asked whether it would follow the US and EU in imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs. Meanwhile, Zheng Zeguang, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, called on both sides to “maintain the momentum and focus on cooperation” at an event in London attended by Carbon Brief.
EU-CHINA TENSIONS: Just before Reeves’ arrival, China had “concluded that the EU’s recent [anti-subsidies] investigations into Chinese enterprises…were ‘unfair and non-transparent’”, SCMP reported. However, Beijing did not confirm whether it would “take any retaliatory measures in light of the probe’s findings”, added the newspaper. Bloomberg reported that the EU was “set to warn” that the bloc is “facing stiffening pressure” from nations including China. China’s president Xi Jinping, nevertheless, told European Council president Antonio Costa that “China has always regarded Europe as an important pole in a multipolar world”, reported Xinhua. In her own Davos speech, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen noted concerns over “a second China shock – because of state-sponsored over-capacity”, but said “we should…strive for mutual benefits in our conversation with China”.
Analysts debate China’s oil demand peak
OIL PEAKING?: As much as 10% of China’s oil-refining capacity could be closed in the next 10 years due to “an earlier-than-expected peak” in oil demand, Reuters reported. Chinese oil imports in 2024 fell 1.9% to 11.04m barrels per day, the “first annual decline in two decades outside of pandemic-induced falls”, another Reuters article said. A Financial Times “big read” – titled “Has China already reached peak oil?” – attributed the decline to China’s property crisis and rising electrification of transport. It quoted the head of oil giant Saudi Aramco claiming plastic and petrochemical demand could sustain demand going forward, but also quoted an International Energy Agency analyst saying the decline in transport oil use would outweigh this. The sale of petrol-powered cars in China “plunged” last year, as sales of all types of EVs rose more than 40%, according to the Associated Press.
COAL POWER-UP: China’s thermal power generation – largely coal – rose 1.5% in 2024 to 6,340 terawatt-hours (TWh), Reuters reported, “defying “expectations that coal generation was peaking”. However, the aggregate data mask a “very significant breakpoint”, it quoted CREA lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta saying, as an 11% “spike” in coal-fired power growth in January and February was followed by a plateau from March to November. Total power consumption reached 9,852TWh, up 6.8% year-on-year, BJX News reported. On Twitter, David Fishman, senior manager at consultancy Lantau Group, said growth in power consumption in the past six months of 2024 “was considerably slower than in the [first] half of the year”.
RENEWABLE RECORDS: China has broken its “own records for new wind and solar power installations again” in 2024, reported Reuters. Solar capacity grew to nearly 890 gigawatts (GW), up 45% – or 277GW – year-on-year, Jiemian reported, while wind capacity grew 79GW to around about 520GW. The news outlet added that thermal power “is still the largest source of electricity” in China overall. To “keep pace with surging renewable generation”, China’s State Grid Corporation will spend 650bn yuan ($89bn) – a record amount – on upgrading the nation’s power infrastructure this year, Bloomberg said. It added that most of this would likely go to “ultra-high-voltage power lines” and “smaller networks linking rooftop solar panels”.
Annual environment conference
MEE CONFERENCE: China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) confirmed eight “key tasks” for 2025, including expanding the national carbon market and promoting “green, low-carbon and high-quality development”, at its annual work conference on 14-15 January, reported Shanghai-based media outlet the Paper. The ministry also announced that “approximately 80% of the nation’s crude steel production capacity has undergone either comprehensive ultra-low emission transformations or targeted upgrades in key segments of their production processes”, according to the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily. At a separate press conference, MEE said it has approved environmental investments worth 980bn yuan ($133bn) in 2024, while pledging to “refine the conviction and sentencing standards for falsifying environmental assessments” within the legal system in China.
EMISSIONS ACCOUNTING: Meanwhile, China released its first “national database of emission factors” for “improving the accuracy” of greenhouse gas emission calculations, Science and Technology Daily reported. It also released the “first batch of carbon footprint accounting rules”, covering steel, cement, EV batteries and 12 other “industrial products”, said China Energy Network.
Spotlight
Q&A: How China became the world’s leading market for energy storage
China is the world’s largest market for energy storage, followed by the US and Europe, according to BloombergNEF. The storage industry has attracted investments worth hundreds of billions of yuan and rapidly developed in recent years.
However, rapid growth has caused other problems, such as “temporary structural overcapacity” and low utilisation.
In this issue, Carbon Brief explores how China has been driving the sector forwards and how it fits into the nation’s wider energy transition. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Soaring battery deployment
China is experiencing a renewable energy boom, adding a massive 301 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity, including solar, wind and hydro, in 2023 alone – more than the total renewable generating capacity installed in most countries over all time.
However, the country’s power system still struggles to absorb all of the generation, making energy storage – which bridges temporal and geographical gaps between energy supply and demand – a key tool for the country to improve its renewable energy integration.
Pumped hydro storage is the most common utility-scale storage system and has a long history in China. As of 2023, pumped hydro storage surpassed 50GW, making up more than half of the country’s overall storage capacity.
The remaining half is comprised primarily of batteries and emerging technologies, such as compressed air and flywheels, as well as thermal energy.
These technologies, known as the “new type” energy storage in China, have seen rapid growth in recent years. Lithium-ion batteries dominate the “new type” sector.
The deployment of “new type” energy storage capacity almost quadrupled in 2023 in China, increasing to 31.4GW, up from just 8.7 GW in 2022, according to data from the National Energy Administration (NEA).
This means that China surpassed its target of reaching 30GW of the “new type” energy storage by 2025 two years earlier than planned. The goal had been set by the NEA and China’s top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission, under the 14th “five year plan”.
(Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A: What does China’s 14th ‘five year plan’ mean for climate change?)
High deployment, low usage
To promote battery storage, China has implemented a number of policies, most notably the gradual rollout since 2017 of the “mandatory allocation of energy storage” policy (强制配储政策), which is also known as the “new energy plus storage” model (新能源+储能).
Under the mandate, which applies in dozens of provinces, renewable companies are required to include a certain amount of energy storage capacity alongside new solar and wind generation projects, with the storage allocation rate ranging between 5% to 20%.
Cheaper costs led by technology innovation have also helped the market’s increasing adoption of batteries, Sun Yongping, researcher of emissions trading and vice-dean of the Institute of State Governance at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, told Carbon Brief.
Despite its positive intentions, the mandatory storage policy has had unintended consequences. Notably, a significant portion of the installed storage capacity remains underutilised.
In regions covered by the State Grid – the government-owned operator that runs the majority of the country’s electricity transmission network – more than four-fifths of the storage systems operate less than 10% of the time, with many used only once every two days, according to a Bloomberg report.
Another challenge, according to Guo, is the additional project costs and lack of effective incentives, as many storage facilities were built or rented to fulfil government requirements, but went unused afterwards.
Both Guo and Sun argue that China needs a deeper level of electricity market pricing reforms to create incentives to use storage.
Guo said: “We still hope that each place deploys new energy storage according to its needs and understands its own situation instead of adopting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.”
‘New driving force’ for economy
Earlier this year, the NEA named the energy storage sector as a “new driving force” for the country’s “new quality productive forces ” (NQPF).
(Read more on Carbon Brief’s Q&A: “What China’s push for ‘new quality productive forces’ means for climate action.”)
Regional governments also saw the economic opportunity in energy storage. Guangdong, for example, aimed to make energy storage a “strategic pillar industry” by 2025.
Meanwhile, Zhejiang, Anhui and Guangdong also have ambitious targets of installing local storage capacity of 3GW each by 2025, according to a recent tally by Greenpeace East Asia, based on government documents.
The booming market has attracted more than 100bn yuan ($14bn) since 2021.
But risks of market turmoil also exist. According to battery industrial information provider Gaogong Industrial Institute, last year China saw more than 70,000 newly registered companies in the sector, which indicated that the market – already seeing fierce competition – may now be undergoing an “overcapacity” period.
Guo said this period of “overcapacity”, however, is “temporary”. She adds:
“There exists a temporary structural overcapacity, as the current expansion of new type energy storage is outpacing the market needs.
“However, if the regional governments could provide more policy support for the application of storage projects, this ‘excess capacity’ due to insufficient market demand could be avoided.”
This Spotlight was written by freelance climate journalist Yuan Ye for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
CARBON ‘SPIRIT’: Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s top planner National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), wrote a comment for People’s Daily about the “spirit” of the Central Committee of the Communist party, including insisting on the “dual-carbon” goals.
PARIS ‘THREATS’: Caixin published a speech by former Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan arguing that the Paris Agreement faces “mounting threats”, with funding for climate change initiatives “remain[ing] critically insufficient”.
CBAM SOLUTION: A comment for the 21st Century Business Herald by Lin Boqiang, dean at the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy of Xiamen University, discussed developing China’s carbon market as a response to the EU’s carbon border tariff (CBAM).
US-CHINA CLIMATE: US thinktank the Brookings Institution released a video recording of a panel discussion on the “evolving dynamics of US-China relations on climate change and green technology”.
New science
Maximum carbon uptake potential through progressive management of plantation forests in Guangdong province, China
Communications Earth & Environment
Harvesting young planted forests and then replanting over a 20-year period could sequester 2.5 times more carbon than simply preserving forests, according to new research on China’s Guangdong province. The authors used satellite data, forest growth models and machine learning to identify “key drivers of carbon accumulation”. The study found that the optimal scenario for carbon sequestration, described above, “could yield a potential carbon stock of 0.5 gigatonnes of carbon by 2060, without expanding forest cover”.
Evaluation and future projection of compound extreme events in China using CMIP6 models
Climate change
A new study evaluated the simulation performance of CMIP6 climate models for “six types of compound extreme event” in China. The research found four major results including “the performance of general circulation models (GCMs) in the simulation of extreme temperature indices is better than that for extreme precipitation indices, and positive biases exist in extreme precipitation indices for most models”. It added that the frequency of warm extremes may increase in the future, while cold extremes showed a decreasing trend.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 23 January 2025: China’s climate ‘concern’ over Trump; Peak oil debate; China’s energy storage lead appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Over the past decade, coal power use in the European Union (EU) has fallen by 61%, according to Carbon Brief analysis of new figures from energy analysts Ember.
Solar power output in the EU more than tripled between 2014 and 2024, the report shows, with last year seeing coal generation overtaken for the first time.
Meanwhile, wind generation has more than doubled over the same period.
Wind and solar growth over the past decade pushed EU fossil-fuel generation in 2024 to its lowest level in 40 years, despite the long-term decline of nuclear power.
The increase in wind and solar generation in the EU also helped avoid €59bn in fossil-fuel imports over the past five years, Ember says.
Without the increase in solar and wind capacity since 2019, the EU would have imported an extra 92bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas and 55m tonnes (Mt) of hard coal. Ember says this helped avoid cumulative emissions of some 460m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2).
Accelerated wind and solar growth facilitated by permitting reform and other measures could help the EU end Russian energy imports entirely, adds Ember.
Five years of falling fossil fuels
Last year marked five years since the passing of the European Green Deal, officially declaring a “climate emergency” and requiring the European Commission to adapt all its proposals to fall in line with limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Since then, the EU’s electricity sector has seen a “deep transformation”, according to Ember, with a “surge” in renewables driving down the use of fossil fuels and related CO2 emissions.
In 2019, fossil fuels provided 39% – some 1,130 terawatt hours (TWh) – of the EU’s electricity, while renewables provided 34% (979TWh). By the end of 2024, fossil fuels had fallen to 29% (793TWh) – the lowest level in at least 40 years – while renewables had grown to nearly half of the mix (47%, 1,300TWh).
The growth of wind and solar ensured that, despite a decline in nuclear over the past 10 years, coal and gas are both being squeezed out of the electricity generation mix in the EU, as shown in the chart below.
The growth of solar and wind over the past five years has cumulatively avoided 736TWh of fossil-fired generation. This is equivalent to 460m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), or roughly the same as the power-sector emissions of Italy over the past five years, Ember states.
The emissions intensity of electricity fell by 26% over this period, to 213 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour (gCO2 per kWh). This is a steeper decline than that seen in other major economies such as the US, notes Ember, where the emissions intensity of electricity generation fell by 13% over the same period.
Over the past five years, EU solar capacity tripled from 120 gigawatts (GW) to 338GW, continuing the rapid expansion seen in the previous five years. Wind capacity has grown by 37%, from 169GW in 2019 to 231GW in 2024.
Hydropower capacity since the passage of the Green New Deal has remained flat at 130GW and nuclear capacity has fallen from 110GW to 96GW, Ember notes.
The continued growth of wind and solar means EU electricity generation from coal has now dropped by nearly two thirds over the past decade, as the chart below shows. This is despite a small, temporary uptick in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2021.
Moreover, while gas-fired generation in 2024 was slightly higher than it was a decade earlier, it has also dropped every year for the past five years, Ember’s data shows.
Without the growth in renewables since the Green New Deal was brought in, the EU would have spent €59bn on fossil-fuel imports for power generation, according to Ember. Of this, €53bn would have been spent on gas and €6bn on coal.
In total, the EU avoided importing approximately 92bcm, or around 18% of gas consumed in the power sector between the end of 2019 and the end of 2024. It also avoided imports of 55Mt of hard coal.
Coal has been particularly impacted by the growth of solar and wind, falling from 16% of the EU electricity mix in 2019 to less than 10% in 2024. This has more than cancelled out the impact of the temporary uptick in 2021 and 2022 during the gas crisis.
In 2024, coal provided less than 5% of the power mix in 16 EU countries, Ember says, 10 of which had no operating coal power plants.
Portugal phased coal out of its electricity mix completely and a new wave of coal power plant closures is “imminent”, says Ember. There are 11 EU countries that have announced plans to totally phase out coal from their electricity mix in the next five years.
Along with the fall in coal power, gas fell by a quarter over the past five years from providing 20% of EU power in 2019 to 16% in 2024, according to Ember.
This drop has contributed to efforts to limit EU reliance on Russian gas, although imports from the nation still accounted for 14% of total gas consumption in 2024.
While this was down from around 50% in 2019, it was an increase of 18% on the previous year, mainly due to increased imports into Italy, the Czech Republic and France.
According to Ember, the power sector consumed approximately 88bcm of gas in 2024, of which 10bcm (12%) was Russian, as shown in the figure below. These imports provided the country with an estimated €4bn in revenue.
Even with the uptick in 2024, the EU’s power sector is far less reliant on importing Russian gas than it was five years earlier, Ember’s data shows.
Solar continues to surge
There was a record increase in solar generation in 2024, up 54TWh (+22%) year-on-year, according to Ember. This is despite the sector having already seen growth of 40TWh in 2023.
Additionally, 2024 saw record annual capacity additions, with the EU solar fleet growing by 66GW, 4% more than the 63GW addition seen in 2023.
This growth rate is above what national targets would require and nearly sufficient to hit the EU’s 2030 goal, notes Ember, as shown in the figure below.
Ember says this is “highlighting a disconnect between the rapid pace of on-the-ground market trends and the slow response of governments in updating their targets”.
In 2024, solar output grew in all EU members and 16 countries generated more than 10% of their electricity from the technology, the report notes – three more than the previous year.
However, in some countries, solar is getting close to exceeding demand during peak hours, according to Ember. Its report says that 12 EU countries saw solar generating 80% or more of power demand for at least one hour in 2024.
As such, plentiful solar is pushing hourly power prices to zero or even below. In 2024, negative or zero price hours became more common, growing from 2% of hours in 2023 to 4% in 2024 across the EU.
The increase in negative pricing periods highlights the business case for more flexibility options, notes Ember, with consumers able to save money by shifting demand to periods of abundant generation or using battery storage to take advantage of low-cost solar generation by selling it back to the grid during demand peaks.
While the deployment of battery storage has been growing in recent years – doubling to 16GW in 2023 from 8GW in 2022, the report notes – capacity is concentrated in a small number of countries, with Germany and Italy together housing 70% of existing battery capacity in the EU as of the end of 2023.
Additionally, demand flexibility and smart electrification could help consumers reduce their bills, Ember states. Grids and cross-border interconnectors can help to provide additional flexibility across the EU, it adds.
Wind woes easing
Beyond solar, wind generation grew 7TWh year-on-year in 2024, to reach 477TWh, according to Ember.
While this growth is lower than the average of 30TWh seen between 2019 and 2023, the technology remains cost-competitive with fossil power and installation rates are expected to increase in coming years, the report says.
Between 2010 and 2021, the cost of European onshore and offshore wind fell by 68% and 60%, respectively, Ember notes, based on levelised costs, a standardised metric used to gauge the average cost of electricity generation of a technology.
However, wind costs have broadly plateaued since then, according to the report, due to high inflation and supply chain problems following the Covid-19 pandemic and the global energy crisis.
While these issues have affected a range of sectors, the wind industry has felt them more acutely than solar, according to Ember, due to longer lead times and relatively higher upfront investment requirements.
This has been seen around the world, with the UK and the US amongst the nations to have seen their wind sectors knocked by higher prices.
Despite the impact of these factors on the deployment costs of wind, it remains competitive compared to gas generation, argues Ember. The price of buying gas fuel on European markets has grown throughout 2024, sitting at around €50 per megawatt hour (MWh) at the end of the year – well above the pre-crisis norm of €20/MWh.
As such, the average short-run marginal cost of EU gas-fired power across 2024 reached a high of around €125/MWh in December, continues Ember. This remains above the typical costs of both onshore and offshore wind.
In addition to facing macroeconomic headwinds, Ember says that expanding grids, permitting new projects and managing grid connections have been “inadequate for the pace of the energy transition”.
Action is being taken by governments within the EU however, for example, rules brought in to cut the permitting times for onshore wind from six years to two years.
Permitting rates were higher in the first half of 2024 than the previous year in most markets, which Ember says boosts confidence that the project pipeline for wind is strengthening.
In Germany, for example, approvals reached 12GW, up by 60% compared to the same period in 2023, notes the report.
Turbine orders also recovered, up 40% between January and September 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, while auctions awarded contracts to a record 28GW of new capacity across the EU in 2024.
However, while there are signs of growth, delays in recent years have created a wider delivery gap between market forecasts and EU ambition, the report notes.
In a statement, Dr Chris Rosslowe, senior analyst and lead author of the report, says:
“While the EU’s electricity transition has moved faster than anyone expected in the last five years, further progress cannot be taken for granted…However, the achievements of the past five years should instil confidence that, with continued drive and commitment, challenges can be overcome and a more secure energy future be achieved.”
The report calls on the EU to build on the momentum seen in the past five years. Ember suggests this could include ending Russian energy imports, supporting the European wind industry and enacting permitting reforms, among other changes.
The post EU’s solar and wind growth pushes fossil-fuel power to lowest level in 40 years appeared first on Carbon Brief.
EU’s solar and wind growth pushes fossil-fuel power to lowest level in 40 years
While the primary focus of tackling climate change is on carbon dioxide (CO2), a group of other greenhouse gases and aerosols – known as “super pollutants” – is having a profound impact on both global temperature and human health.
They are responsible for around 45% of global warming to date, as well as millions of premature deaths each year.
Cutting emissions of these non-CO2 pollutants, which include methane, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon, is seen as one of the quickest ways to tackle climate change.
Studies have shown how global action to reduce emissions of super pollutants could avoid four times more warming by 2050 than decarbonisation policies alone.
At the same time, it could prevent some 2.4 million deaths a year caused by air pollution.
And, yet, emissions of many super pollutants are soaring.
In this article, we unpack what super pollutants are and why they have an outsized impact on the climate and public health.
The other 45%
CO2 is responsible for around 55% of global warming to date. The other 45% comes from super pollutants: methane; black carbon; fluorinated gases; nitrous oxide; and tropospheric ozone.
These pollutants are present at lower concentrations in the atmosphere than CO2. But each tonne of these substances has a more powerful warming impact than a tonne of CO2 – up to tens of thousands of times more. As a result, they are still responsible for a lot of warming.
Most super pollutants remain in the atmosphere for less time than CO2, ranging from a few days to a few decades. These are known collectively as “short-lived climate pollutants”.
Others, including nitrous oxide and some fluorinated gases, can have very long lifetimes – even tens of thousands of years in some cases.
As well as being substantial contributors to global warming, super pollutants are a major threat to human health.
Poor air quality caused by these pollutants has been linked to a series of heart and respiratory diseases, as well as lung cancer and strokes.
Methane, black carbon and tropospheric ozone are the super pollutants with the most significant impacts on health.
Methane
Methane is the second-largest contributor to climate change after CO2. In its first 20 years in the atmosphere, when it is most potent, methane has a warming potential more than 80 times greater than CO2.
Methane has both human-related and natural sources. Global human-caused methane emissions come from three main areas:
- Agriculture (~40%), such as from livestock and rice production.
- Fossil fuels (~35%), as a by-product of fossil fuel extraction, storage and distribution.
- Waste (~20%), from food and other organic materials decaying in landfills and wastewater.
Recent research has shown that methane emissions have continued to rise, with “no hint of a decline”. According to the World Meteorological Organization, atmospheric concentrations of methane in 2023 were 265% higher than pre-industrial levels.
Methane impacts public health indirectly in a number of ways.
By increasing atmospheric temperatures, disrupting rainfall patterns and contributing to the formation of tropospheric ozone, emissions of the gas contribute to crop failures which exacerbate food insecurity. The gas has been estimated to cause up to 12% of annual agricultural losses of staple crops.
Increased food insecurity has a number of implications for human health. Research has indicated that nearly half of deaths among children under five are linked to undernutrition. These mostly occur in low- and middle-income countries.
However, the biggest impact methane has on health is its contribution to the creation of tropospheric ozone.
Tropospheric ozone
Tropospheric ozone is among the shortest-lived super pollutants, with an atmospheric lifetime of just days to weeks.
But, despite its short-lived nature, the greenhouse gas has a major impact on human health. It has been linked to around 600,000 to 1 million premature respiratory deaths annually and a similar number of premature cardiovascular deaths.
The greenhouse gas does not have any direct sources, but is formed when hydrocarbons – including methane, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide – react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight.
Concentrations of this harmful pollutant are rising. Soaring emissions of its precursor gas – methane – are believed to be responsible for up to half of the observed increase.
As a major component of smog, tropospheric ozone can worsen bronchitis and emphysema, trigger asthma and permanently damage lung tissue. Children, the elderly and people with lung or cardiovascular diseases are particularly at risk from ozone exposure.
In addition to harming human health, studies have shown that many species of plants are sensitive to ozone, including agricultural crops, grassland and trees. Tropospheric ozone damages plants in many ways, including by entering pores in their leaves and burning plant tissue during respiration.
As a result, ozone emissions are a growing threat to food security.
Black carbon
Black carbon is formed by the incomplete combustion of wood, biofuels and fossil fuels in a process which also creates carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and VOCs.
Commonly known as soot, black carbon has a warming impact up to 1,500 times stronger than CO2 per tonne. The pollutant dims sunlight that reaches the Earth, interferes with rainfall patterns and disrupts monsoons. Where it settles on snow and ice, it reduces reflectivity and increases melt rates.
Black carbon is a major component of fine particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5), which has been linked to a raft of negative health outcomes, including premature death in adults with heart and lung disease, strokes, heart attacks, chronic respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, aggravated asthma and other cardio-respiratory symptoms.
Each year, around 4–8 million deaths globally are associated with long-term exposure to PM2.5.
While untangling how many deaths are directly attributable to black carbon is tricky, there is growing evidence of its specific health impacts.
Studies have shown that exposure to black carbon correlates with high blood-pressure levels more strongly than PM2.5 overall. Exposure to the pollutant in pregnancy has also been found to impact the development and health of newborn children and is associated with reduced birthweight.
An integrated approach to climate and health
There has been growing political momentum around the threat of super pollutants.
One clear example of this is the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative launched at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. The pledge, which has been backed by 158 countries and the European Union, commits governments to collectively reduce global human-caused methane emissions by at least 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.
However, methane emissions are going in the wrong direction. Emissions are currently on track to increase by 5-13% above 2020 levels by 2030, according to a 2022 analysis from the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and United Nations Environment Programme.
Building awareness of the health consequences of climate change can encourage policymakers to set ambitious limits on super pollutant emissions. It can also underline the importance of a joined-up policy approach to climate and health, where emissions reduction pledges can help spur policies that improve lives.
The Global Methane Pledge and the Kigali Amendment – an international agreement to reduce the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons – are just two pledges that could have immediate and dramatic effects on public health, if fully implemented.
Cutting emissions of super pollutants is one of the most effective ways to “keep 1.5C alive” in the near-term, while protecting health and avoiding tipping points that could cause irreversible shifts in the Earth system.
Combined with the health benefits, rapidly reducing emissions of these pollutants is a clear win-win for people and the planet.
The post Guest post: How ‘super pollutants’ harm human health and worsen climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How ‘super pollutants’ harm human health and worsen climate change
After Trump’s pullback, Bloomberg promises to fill US funding gap to UN climate body
China Briefing 23 January 2025: China’s climate ‘concern’ over Trump; Peak oil debate; China’s energy storage lead
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