2024 pushes 2023 off top spot for hottest year on record

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(CNS): Earth has now endured a decade of record-breaking heat after 2024 knocked 2023 off the top spot as the hottest year on record. The rapidly rising heat over the last ten years has been fueled by man’s behaviour and reached the point where scientists are now saying that the hope of restricting the rise to 1.5°C has been lost and is “dead as a doornail”.

As the planet boils under the relentless human consumption of fossil fuels, the crisis humanity is in should be in no doubt. But collectively, the world’s political and financial leaders are doing almost nothing about it.

This is as true here in the Cayman Islands as it is around the world.

While the people of Cayman can do little to turn down the global heat, we could at least mitigate the situation by preparing the islands for what is to come. But the current administration appears hell-bent on doing the opposite.

The UPM government is still seeking to undermine the efficacy of the National Conservation Act and the council that administers it. The UPM has also failed to make any moves towards implementing the measures set out in the new climate policy document to make these islands more resilient to climate change.

In his New Year’s message last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to note that the ten hottest years on record have happened in the last ten years, and the Earth has endured a decade of deadly heat. “This is climate breakdown in real time,” he said. “In 2025, countries must put the world on a safer path by dramatically slashing emissions and supporting the transition to a renewable future.”

While 2024 was not the hottest year on record for every country, it was in many and close to the top for others. Throughout the year, many records were toppled during 2024’s relentless heat around the world.

The World Meteorological Organization is also warning that this record-breaking heat will continue into 2025, regardless of the current winter storms across North America and Europe, further accelerating climate change. The agency’s scientists said this could lead to catastrophic consequences if urgent action is not taken to stem the “human activities” behind this looming disaster.

“Greenhouse gas levels continue to grow to record observed highs, locking in even more heat for the future,” the WMO said last week as it urged greater international cooperation to address extreme heat risks “as global temperatures rise, and extreme heat events become more frequent and severe”.

Celeste Saulo, who was appointed WMO secretary-general in June 2023 and began her four-year term in January 2024, said that in her first year in office, she “issued repeated Red Alerts about the state of the climate”, warning that “every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, impacts and risks”.

The WMO State of the Climate 2024 report found that between January and September, global average temperatures were 1.54°C warmer than in pre-industrial times and above the level stipulated in the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change.

The Cayman Islands also endured higher than average temperatures throughout 2024. We are awaiting the final report from the Cayman Islands National Weather Service reviewing last year’s numbers, though from January to November, the CINWS recorded an increase in average monthly temperatures every month, indicating it is also likely to be Cayman’s warmest year on record.

In November, despite a welcome increase in rainfall — 11.3 inches on Grand Cayman, well above the average of 6.2 inches and record breaking numbers on Cayman Brac — the average maximum temperature was also 0.2°C higher on Grand Cayman.

Cayman’s own climate is only part of the problem for these islands as global temperatures, especially sea temperatures, are critical to our future well-being. Warmer rising seas not only fuel more intense storms but increase flood risk. The extremely hot ocean temperatures are killing local reefs, which, combined with overdevelopment on our coast and the mass destruction of wetlands and mangroves, are removing the protections the islands once had from storms and flooding.

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2024 pushes 2023 off top spot for hottest year on record

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