Earth records hottest May on record in 12th consecutive month of record heat
May 2024 was not only the twelfth monthly record in a row, it was the eleventh consecutive month the world exceeded the 1.5 degree pre-industrial benchmark set in the Paris Agreement.
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GENEVA, Switzerland – It's official: May 2024 was the hottest May on record globally, according to Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). That makes May the 12th month in a row to set record heat.
"It is shocking but not surprising that we have reached this 12-month streak," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "While this sequence of record-breaking months will eventually be interrupted, the overall signature of climate change remains and there is no sign in sight of a change in such a trend."
May 2.74 degrees warmer than pre-industrial average
The average global temperature for the warmest May on record hit 55.35 degrees F (12.97 degrees C), which was 1.17 degrees F (0.65 degrees C) warmer than the 1991-2020 average. Every month since June 2023 has been the warmest on record.
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Monthly global surface air temperature anomalies (°C) relative to 1850–1900 from January 1940 to May 2024, plotted as time series for each year spanning June to May of the following year. The last 12 months (June 2023 – May 2024) are shown with a thick red line while all other years with thin lines shaded according to the decade, from blue (1940s) to brick red (2020s).
(C3S/ECMWF / FOX Weather)
May 2024 was 2.74 degrees F (1.52 degrees C) warmer than the pre-industrial average from 1850-1900. The month was the 11th consecutive month, since July 2023, to reside above the benchmark 1.5 degrees C (2.27 degrees F) mark set by the Paris Accord climate agreement.
That makes the global average temperature for the last 12 months also the highest on record, at 1.35 degrees F (0.75 degrees C) warmer than the 1991-2020 average. The 12-month period exceeds the pre-industrial average by 2.93 degrees F (1.63 degrees C) over the pre-industrial average.
"For the past year, every turn of the calendar has turned up the heat. Our planet is trying to tell us something," António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General said in a statement. "But we don't seem to be listening. It’s climate crunch time. Now is the time to mobilize, act and deliver."
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Twelve-month running mean anomalies of the global average surface air temperature relative to the 1850–1900 pre-industrial reference, based on monthly values from January 1940 to May 2024.
(C3S/ECMWF / FOX Weather)
Over the next five years, at least one will be the warmest on record, beating 2023, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K.'s Meteorological Office.
Not too late to reverse the trend
The C3S said that it is not too late to change the trend.
"We are living in unprecedented times, but we also have unprecedented skill in monitoring the climate and this can help inform our actions," Buontempo said. "This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold (without action), but if we manage to stabilize the concentrations of GHGs (greenhouse gasses) in the atmosphere in the very near future, we might be able to return to these ‘cold’ temperatures by the end of the century."
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Did the Earth exceed the 1.5-degree C climate threshold?
So far, it is too early to calculate if the current 1.63 degrees C (2.74 degrees F) change from pre-industrial levels exceeds the Paris Agreement benchmark of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).
According to the U.N.’s recent climate assessment report, a 20-year average of the global mean temperature must exceed 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) to break the Paris Agreement.
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File: A demonstrator carries a globe with a model of the Paris Eiffel Tower with reference to the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming preferably to 1,5 degrees Celsius.
(ARMANDO BABANI/AFP / Getty Images)
"A single year of exceedance above 1.5°C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period," Leon Hermanson, Ph.D., of the United Kingdom Met Office said in a statement.
The countries that ratified the 2015 Paris Accord pledged to keep the number "well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels" and to attempt to "limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F)" above pre-industrial levels.
"The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic," said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas in a statement. "It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet."