2024 Set to Become Hottest Year on Record

In the year of the Olympics, planet Earth is also set to break a record. But it will not win a medal. The record is that of the hottest year in history, held so far by 2023. The forecast is made by the EU weather service, Copernicus, in its monthly bulletin on global climate. Given the temperatures of the first seven months, and the forecasts for the next five, 2024 will most likely break the heat record of the previous year.
Meanwhile, a scorching weekend is brewing in Italy. For meteorologist Lorenzo Tedici of ilMeteo.it, it will be the hottest weekend of the year, with 40°C in Ferrara, Florence, Forlì, Terni, and similar values ​​in much of the South and on the major islands. Blame it on the African anticyclone, which has increased dramatically, favoring waves of anomalous heat alternating with cloudbursts and hailstorms.
The Ministry of Health announced red dot in 8 cities on Friday (Perugia, Rome, Brescia, Campobasso, Frosinone, Latina, Palermo and Rieti) and in 9 on Saturday (the same ones plus Florence). Orange dot in 6 cities on Friday (Bolzano, Florence, Genoa, Naples, Verona and Viterbo) and in 11 on Saturday (Bologna, Bolzano, Civitavecchia, Genoa, Messina, Naples, Turin, Trieste, Venice, Verona and Viterbo).
Copernicus says that July 2024 was the second warmest July on record, after 2023 (which was also the warmest month of all time). Interestingly, last month broke a streak of 13 consecutive months, each of which was the warmest of its kind (the warmest January, the warmest February, and so on).
In the first seven months of 2024, the global average temperature on the Earth’s surface was 0.70°C above the 30-year reference average 1991-2020, and 0.27°C warmer than in the same period in 2023. For 2024 not to be warmer than 2023, the average temperature of the next 5 months would have to drop by 0.23°C. This has rarely happened in recent decades, notes Copernicus, so it is increasingly likely that this year will beat the previous year’s record.
And the bad news doesn’t end there. Over the past 12 months, from August 2023 to July 2024, the average temperature on Earth has been 1.64°C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). In practice, over the past year the planet has consistently exceeded the 1.5°C limit for global warming, set by the Paris Agreement and Cop26 in Glasgow.