2024 to be world's hottest year on record

This year is "virtually certain" to eclipse 2023 as the world's warmest since records began, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

C3S said that from January to October, the average global temperature had been so high that 2024 was sure to be the world's hottest year - unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged to near-zero.

The scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet is more than 1.5C hotter than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.