Australia Weather News

The world has been at its hottest for the past 10 years, with 2024 now declared the official record-holder, according to data from the European Union's main climate service released on Friday. 

It was also the first calendar year in which Earth exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which is one of the targets world leaders agreed to limit warming to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

It was a year in which floods gave way to heatwaves and devastating storms dominated the headlines, with several major climate milestones also reached.

Let's break down some of the major moments in pictures and graphs.

Well above the rest

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), 2024 was 1.6C warmer than pre-industrial times, easily beating the previous record year of 2023. 

Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess said the world was now teetering on the edge of passing the threshold of global-warming defined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

"These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people."

The 1.5C target was chosen because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that crossing that threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves, rainfall, and coastal flooding from storm surges. 

Passing it for one calendar year does not mean we have failed the Paris Agreement, which refers to a longer-term change over the course of 20-30 years.

Estimates from the latest IPCC report expect global warming to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052, though climate scientists say it’s likely to be earlier based on recent years of data. 

Heavy rainfall events

While the temperature rose, so did rainfall extremes.

Daily rainfall records were 52 per cent more common in 2024 compared to the 1995-2005 average, according to The Global Water Monitor report. 

The report's lead author, Professor Albert van Dijk, said the increase in daily rainfall extremes has been met with significant flash flooding events around the globe, including the devastating flooding in Spain in October.

"It's been another big year in terms of floods and the like," he said. 

"We've had big floods in the south of Brazil, even though there was a drought going on in the north of Brazil, for instance. And we've had similar big floods in places like Bangladesh and associated with cyclones in South-East Asia, Vietnam, southern China, Philippines and so forth."

Over a longer time frame, however, the trend reverses. The Global Water Monitor found the number of record-dry months was well up in 2024, compared to the average. This has become increasingly common in recent decades. 

Extreme weather

The world is a big place, so there's going to be extreme weather in any given year. But Professor van Dijk said this year extreme weather events had gone "from bad to worse", with severe flooding, hurricanes and droughts across all corners of the globe.

The hurricane and typhoon season in the Northern Hemisphere was particularly destructive, marked by several severe and record-breaking systems.

This included Hurricane Beryl, which in July became the earliest Atlantic basin Category-5 hurricane on record. During the Atlantic hurricane season, two severe hurricanes, Helene and Milton, also hit Florida within two weeks of each other.

Meanwhile, the Philippines experienced a record-breaking typhoon season, in which six consecutive storm systems hit the country in less than a month.

People work to clear a mud-covered street with piled up cars in Paiporta, Spain. (Reuters: Eva Manez)

Flood waters outside a home after Hurricane Beryl in Texas. (Reuters: Daniel Becerril)

A man cools down during a heatwave at the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Saudi Arabia. (Reuters: Mohammed Torokman)

A man sits near his shelter on a flooded street in Bamako, Mali. (Reuters: Aboubacar Traore) 

Neighbourhoods affected by flooding in Encantado, Brazil. (Reuters: Diego Vara)

A bridge destroyed during tropical storm Sara, in La Ceiba, Honduras. (Reuters: Esau Ocampo)

A farm labourer sleeps with a handmade fan during a heatwave in New Delhi, India. (Reuters: Anushree Fadnavis)

Flooded shrimp and crab farms during Cyclone Remal in Bangladesh. (Reuters: Mohammad Ponir Hossain)

The Panthenon was forced to close during a heatwave in Athens, Greece. (Reuters: Louiza Vradi)

Fires forced mass evacuations in Alberta, Canada. (Reuters: Amber Bracken)

Flooded houses in Venek, Hungary. (Reuters: Fedja Grulovic)

Hurricane Helene made landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast in September. (Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)

A view of Hurricane Milton from space, as it re-intensified over the southern Gulf of Mexico. (NASA)

Flood damage following Hurricane Helene in Florida. (Reuters: Marco Bello)

Streets are flooded in Hai Phong, Vietnam, after Typhoon Yagi. (Reuters: Minh Nguyen)

Children play along a flooded street following super typhoon Man-Yi in the Philippines. (Reuters:  Lisa Marie David)

A plane sitting on a flooded runway at the airport in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. (Reuters: Adriano Machado)

Ocean heat continues

One of the likely contributors to the extreme weather, according to climate scientists, was the continued presence of extraordinarily hot oceans around the globe.

CSIRO oceanographer Chris Chapman said although some of the ocean heat was expected due to the presence of El Niño, its persistence and intensity across other areas has gone well beyond what's normal.

Extreme weather deaths reducing

Though not specifically about 2024, we thought we'd include this graph from the World Meteorological Organisation, which shows some encouraging news.

Despite the significant increases to disasters, and to the economic cost, improved warnings and disaster management has meant thedeathsfrom these disasters havedecreased. 

Hot nights in Australia

Hot days and hot nights dominated much of the country this year in Australia, despite some severe cold snaps during the winter. This resulted in Australia coming away with its second hottest year on record, overall, since 1910, when reliable national data became available. 

Last year was also the 24th consecutive year the country failed to record a mean temperature cooler than normal. Although the overall temperature was just shy of a record, the overnight minimum temperatures were easily the highest in BOM's 115 years of data. 

Coral bleaching

The "global mass bleaching" of coral reefs around the world since February 2023 is now the most extensive on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch.

A staggering 78.9 per cent of the world's coral reef areas — from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Indian oceans — have so far been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress.

It included the seventh mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef since 1998, and fifth in eight years.

Heat stress

Large parts of the world had multiple days under strong heat stress in 2024, with some experiencing it for most of the year. This included parts of Australia.

A day with at least strong heat stress has a maximum feels-like temperature exceeding 32C.

Antarctic sea ice

Antarctic sea-ice extent — both the annual minimum in February and the maximum in September — was the second lowest since satellite records began, according to the United States' National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Unlike its Northern Hemisphere counterpart, Antarctic sea ice extent has historically not shown strong trends with global warming. However, Dr Chapman said the recent decline had sparked questions among scientists.

"We can't definitively say anything yet, you know, two or three years does not make a trend. But so far the sea ice hasn't rebounded and that's something that is keeping a few of us awake at night because it suggests that perhaps something has changed in the system."

Greenhouse gas emissions

The biggest contributor to our warming climate is greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. To stop that trend, our emissions need to not only plateau but reduce.

Scientists had hoped 2024 was the year that we would see emissions start to fall. Instead, they're still growing, but at a slowing rate.

The rise of renewables

Renewable energy is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in reducing the world's emissions.

The world is headed for record installations of wind and solar in 2024, after a record year in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency. 

But it's still not quite enough to offset the growing demand for electricity, which is why global greenhouse gas emissions did not fall.