2024: the year it got really hot

The world crossed the threshold into +1.2° about two years ago, and the general assumption was that we would stay in that zone for at least the next five years. But 2023 ended up at around +1.4°, with huge wildfires, massive floods, and storms, killer heat waves—and Jim Hansen says 2024, with the El Niño boost, will be much worse.

El Niño is not part of climate change, but in 2024 it will get piled on top of a lot of climate warming that has happened over the past seven years, so it’s certain to break all previous records. The question is by how much. Jim Hansen say by a lot, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of Cpl. Marc-André Leclerc, 2023 DND-MDN Canada

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

December 28, 2023

LONDON, U.K.—This year (2023), has probably been the hottest in the past 10,000 years—but everybody agrees that 2024 will be even hotter. That’s because we are now entering El Niño, the part of a seven-yearly oceanic cycle that heaps extra heat on whatever is already ...

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