2024 was one of the warmest years for Singapore on record, the Meteorological Service Singapore announced on Jan. 10, 2025.
However, temperature records were also broken globally — the past year also turned out to be the hottest year. Ever.
So much so that a major climate threshold was passed — 2024 is the first year that the global average temperature surpassed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The global average temperature for 2024 was, in fact, 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Warning sign
The symbolic 1.5°C was agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Agreement, with scientists stating that any further increase meant that the impacts of climate change would become more extreme and potentially irreversible.
The news by Copernicus does not mean that the 1.5°C target has been broken, as that refers to a long-term average across two decades.
However, this development still represents a warning signal that the earth might be nearing its tipping point.
“The 1.5°C threshold isn’t just a number — it’s a red flag. Surpassing it even for a single year shows how perilously close we are to breaching the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” U.S. climate scientist Victor Gensini told AP.
El Niño, and to a larger extent, the burning of fossil fuels, contributed to the record warming, AP and BBC reported.
The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning is the "primary reason" for the record temperatures, Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at Copernicus said.
The Met Office, NASA and other climate groups will also be releasing their own data on the past year soon, wrote BBC.
United Nations chief António Guterres said in his New Year message:
"We have just endured a decade of deadly heat. The top ten 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years, including 2024."
Guterres described this as a "climate breakdown", and called on countries to slash emissions and support "the transition to a renewable future" in 2025.
Top photo from Unsplash
