It's Official: World, Nation Had Hottest Year in 2024

A red, red world in 2024. It was the hottest year in 
history for Earth. The dark red areas are record warmest
A total of 3.3 billion people endured their hottest
year on record. 

 It's now officials: 2024 was the world's hottest year on record. 

Weeks and months ago, virtually everyone was saying 2024 would be the hottest year, but not the number crunchers have chewed over the data, and have made it official. 

Here's the official word from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information:

"In 2024, global surface temperature was 2.32 degrees F (1.29 degrees C) above the 20th-century average. This ranks as the highest global temperature in the period of 1850-2024, beating the next warmest year (2023) by 0.18 degrees F (0.10 degrees C).

The 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade. In 2024, global temperatures exceed the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average by 2.63 degrees F. (1.46 degrees C)."

If you compare 2024 to the pre-industrial average, this past  year was the first one that was as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than that pre-industrial average. 

The hottest areas relative to average were in the Arctic, northeastern North America and eastern Europe. 

The only sort of cool areas on Earth in 2024 were in southern Greenland, eastern Antarctica, the southeastern Pacific Ocean and Drake Passage. 

Not every single place on Earth had its hottest year on record. But when you take the sum of all the temperatures all around the globe, the average ends up the hottest. 

Also, according to Berkeley Earth 3.3 billion people  or 40 percent of the world's population (including the nearly 650,000 people here in Vermont) actually did experience their hottest year on record. 

All of the top ten warmest years on Earth have been since 2015. 

Last year helps cement the fact that the rate of global warming is accelerating. Since 1850, the rate of warming has been 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit. Since 1975, the rate of warming has zoomed up to 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

Sea level rise is also accelerating. The pace in 2024 was about 4.5 millimeters or 0.18 inches per year. The pace of sea level rise has doubled since 1992.  

For you skeptics out there, NOAA's stats on how hot 2024 was match what other major scientific organizations concluded.

NASA, the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, Berkeley Earth and the Met Office of Great Britain all said 2024 was conclusively the hottest on record.

As for 2025, NOAA is giving this year only a 4 percent chance of beating out 2024 for the title of hottest year on record. La Nina, which cools the Earth a little bit, is in all swing, although it's not exactly the strongest one ever

Still - and I think this is kind of remarkable - is that scientists think 2025 will hotter than 2016, which had been Earth's hottest year on record before 2023 and 2024 came along. 

  DECEMBER

The global year ended on a predictably hot note. December was the second warmest on record, exceeded only by 2023.  

In December, the northern hemisphere was especially toasty. All but the East Coast of the United States was far warmer than average. So was virtually all of Canada, the Arctic, central and eastern Europe and Russia, especially Siberia. 

The only vaguely cool areas relative to average - and they weren't really cooler than the 20th century average - were north-central Africa, parts of Asia, southern South America, a decent chunk of Antarctica and southern Greenland. 

Arctic sea ice extent in December was the lowest in the 47 years satellites have been keeping tabs of the ice cover up there. 

December fit the entire pattern of 2024: And 2023 for that matter. Every month from June, 2023 through July, 2024 were record warmest. August through December, 2024 were second warmest, as the world "cooled" minusculely with the end of El Nino.   

It's still disconcerting that the world is still running just short of hottest. Maybe there will be temporary relief in January, 2025, as there have been some pretty strong cold snaps in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps January will be merely somewhere in the top ten warmest, not near the top. We'll find out in a few weeks. 

UNITED STATES IN 2024

It turns out 2024 was indeed the warmest year in the Lower 48 of the United States.

The warmest areas relative to average were Minnesota, areas around the Great Lakes, northern New England and some spots in Texas and New Mexico.  

Record hot year in the U.S. 2. Those in dark red
had a record hot year. Dark orange (most of the
nation) is much above normal. Tiny areas of
light orange are merely above normal. 

Seventeen states - including here in Vermont - had their warmest year on record in 2024. All but two states in the Lower 48 were in the top five warmest list. The "coldest" state in this list was Washington, which was only the seventh warmest. 

The United States had 27 weather/climate disasters in 2024 that each cost at least $1 billion, the second most in a calendar year.  The total cost of these 27 disaster was $182.7 billion, the fourth highest on record, adjusted for inflation.

Of course, 2025 is getting off to a terrible start. The one billion dollar disaster - the California wildfires - so far this year might well have exceeded the cost of all 27 last year, and that disaster is still unfolding and causing additional damage. 

Still to go in 2025, we have yet to get through the spring tornado season, summer flood season and hurricane season, all the types of storms that can cause billions in damage. And who knows weather the West Coast.

Last year was also really bad for tornadoes, too. We had at least 1,735 confirmed tornadoes. There might have been as many as 1,882 U.S. tornadoes in 2024, based on preliminary data.   Strong tornadoes, EF-2 or worse were more frequent than any year since the historically bad and tragic year of 2011, which brought 1612 tornadoes

Tornado deaths were far fewer in 2024 than in 2011, though. Last year, tornadoes caused 53 U.S. deaths. That compares favorably to 2011, when 553 Americans died in tornadoes.