Germany Says 2024 Has Been Its Hottest Year On Record

This year has been Germany’s hottest since records began 143 years ago, its weather agency said Tuesday, matching unprecedented temperature highs felt around the globe.

“Never since the end of the 19th century has it been as warm in Germany as in 2024,” Tobias Fuchs of the German Meteorological Service (DWD) said in a statement.

The DWD did not give an average temperature for 2024 but said it will publish a full annual meteorological report on December 30.

Germany’s previous temperature record was reached in 2023, when the average temperature was 10.6C and floods hit southern areas of the country.

“The consequences of increasing global warming are hitting us with more frequent and more intense weather extremes,” Fuchs said.

“As a society and as individuals we must protect our climate much better.”

The European climate monitor said last week that 2024 was “effectively certain” to be the hottest year on record.

In another milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the pre-industrial era, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5C over a decades-long period would imperil the planet. Countries agreed under the Paris climate accord to strive to limit warming to this safer threshold.

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