Home/Blog2024 Sets New Record for Warmest Year In Satellite Era (Since 1979)
The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2024 was +0.62 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the November, 2024 anomaly of +0.64 deg.
The Version 6.1 global area-averaged temperature trend (January 1979 through December 2024) remains at +0.15 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).
As seen in the following ranking of the years from warmest to coolest, 2024 was by far the warmest in the 46-year satellite record averaging 0.77 deg. C above the 30-year mean, while the 2nd warmest year (2023) was +0.43 deg. C above the 30-year mean. [Note: These yearly average anomalies weight the individual monthly anomalies by the number of days in each month.]
The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 24 months (record highs are in red).
| YEAR | MO | GLOBE | NHEM. | SHEM. | TROPIC | USA48 | ARCTIC | AUST |
| 2023 | Jan | -0.06 | +0.07 | -0.19 | -0.41 | +0.14 | -0.10 | -0.45 |
| 2023 | Feb | +0.07 | +0.13 | +0.01 | -0.13 | +0.64 | -0.26 | +0.11 |
| 2023 | Mar | +0.18 | +0.22 | +0.14 | -0.17 | -1.36 | +0.15 | +0.58 |
| 2023 | Apr | +0.12 | +0.04 | +0.20 | -0.09 | -0.40 | +0.47 | +0.41 |
| 2023 | May | +0.28 | +0.16 | +0.41 | +0.32 | +0.37 | +0.52 | +0.10 |
| 2023 | June | +0.30 | +0.33 | +0.28 | +0.51 | -0.55 | +0.29 | +0.20 |
| 2023 | July | +0.56 | +0.59 | +0.54 | +0.83 | +0.28 | +0.79 | +1.42 |
| 2023 | Aug | +0.61 | +0.77 | +0.45 | +0.78 | +0.71 | +1.49 | +1.30 |
| 2023 | Sep | +0.80 | +0.84 | +0.76 | +0.82 | +0.25 | +1.11 | +1.17 |
| 2023 | Oct | +0.79 | +0.85 | +0.72 | +0.85 | +0.83 | +0.81 | +0.57 |
| 2023 | Nov | +0.77 | +0.87 | +0.67 | +0.87 | +0.50 | +1.08 | +0.29 |
| 2023 | Dec | +0.75 | +0.92 | +0.57 | +1.01 | +1.22 | +0.31 | +0.70 |
| 2024 | Jan | +0.80 | +1.02 | +0.58 | +1.20 | -0.19 | +0.40 | +1.12 |
| 2024 | Feb | +0.88 | +0.95 | +0.81 | +1.17 | +1.31 | +0.86 | +1.16 |
| 2024 | Mar | +0.88 | +0.96 | +0.80 | +1.26 | +0.22 | +1.05 | +1.34 |
| 2024 | Apr | +0.94 | +1.12 | +0.77 | +1.15 | +0.86 | +0.88 | +0.54 |
| 2024 | May | +0.78 | +0.77 | +0.78 | +1.20 | +0.05 | +0.22 | +0.53 |
| 2024 | June | +0.69 | +0.78 | +0.60 | +0.85 | +1.37 | +0.64 | +0.91 |
| 2024 | July | +0.74 | +0.86 | +0.62 | +0.97 | +0.44 | +0.56 | -0.06 |
| 2024 | Aug | +0.76 | +0.82 | +0.70 | +0.75 | +0.41 | +0.88 | +1.75 |
| 2024 | Sep | +0.81 | +1.04 | +0.58 | +0.82 | +1.32 | +1.48 | +0.98 |
| 2024 | Oct | +0.75 | +0.89 | +0.61 | +0.64 | +1.90 | +0.81 | +1.09 |
| 2024 | Nov | +0.64 | +0.88 | +0.41 | +0.53 | +1.12 | +0.79 | +1.00 |
| 2024 | Dec | +0.62 | +0.76 | +0.48 | +0.53 | +1.42 | +1.12 | +1.54 |
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for December, 2024, and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.
The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days at the following locations:
Happy New Year.
Same for you he…
Very strange – and slightly worrying that the new record exceeded the previous record by such a large margin.
While alarmists like you may find it concerning, for unbiased and objective individuals, it’s an opportunity for learning and a reminder that the science isn’t as settled as popularly claimed.
Boy was that nonsensical
The final annual figure was pretty much locked in over the last couple of months, but it’s still astonishing to see how much of an outlier it is in the graph. Most other data sets are not going to show as much if a discrepancy between this year and last year, though that’s more because they started with 2023 being somewhat warmer than UAH.
Compared with other spikes this still seems very different to me. Starting earlier and cooling less rapidly. I still think we’ll have to wait and see what happens in 2025 before we have a clue as to what’s been happening the last two years.
Compared with other spikes this still seems very different to me
`Because its not real
https://youtu.be/BXfudZK1DEQ
https://youtu.be/VrJiU9BOEBI
There appear to be two warming influences at the present time. The increase in high altitude water vapor and the decrease in clouds. In 2021 December was at 0.16 C and was also in La Nina conditions. This puts the warming influence between .4-.5 C.
I think 2021 will be a reasonable year for comparison over the next 5-6 months. We can see if these effects are dissipating by comparison.
The thicker Sun blocking clouds will come back when galactic cosmic rays can penetrate our magnetosphere again.
Mostly the 2030s.
Very clear, Richard M.
The HTE is slowly dissipating, as indicated by the link you provided months ago:
https://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data_services/met/qbo/h2o_MLS_vLAT_qbo_75S-75N_10hPa.pdf
There are indeed “warming influences”, just not CO2. CO2’s 15μ photons can NOT warm a 288K surface.
The H-T Volcano had a slight cooling effect, and it ended by the end of 2023:
MR Schoeberl et al, (2024). Evolution of the climate forcing during the two years after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2024JD041296. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD041296
David will discover the truth eventually. His denial and similar denials from the climate cult will disappear along with the HTE warming.
Richard, can you point out the errors in the cited publication?
Ad hom rejections of legit science won’t make your case.
Sorry Nate, climate pseudoscience is nothing but a cult. You won’t find any real science in their sermons.
Then we can safely ignore your science-free rants.
Appell religiously refers to his cult’s nonsense paper, not understanding the first 5 words of the abstract: “We calculate the climate forcing”
“Calculating climate forcing” is cult nonsense. It’s all false beliefs stacked on false beliefs. It all started with Arrhenius claiming he could add CO2 and create energy.
That ain’t science.
“‘Calculating climate forcing’is cult nonsense”‘ sez the person who did no calculation but arrived at a conclusion anyway!
All you guys offer is correlation ‘must equal’ causation, which certainly ain’t science!
Interesting. I still think a warmer planet is a better planet, with fewer people dying from the cold.
And CO2 undoubtedly is greening the planet.
There doesn’t seem to be any data showing extreme weather events increasing in number, though there does seem a lot of attribution of weather events to climate change which seems closer to Scientology as actual science.
“Global warming already driving increases in rainfall extremes: Precipitation extremes are affecting even arid parts of the world, study shows,” Nature 3/7/16
http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-already-driving-increases-in-rainfall-extremes-1.19508
“Increased record-breaking precipitation events under global warming,” J Lehmann et al, Clim. Change 132, 501515 (2015).
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-015-1434-y
Evidence for more extreme downpours:
Papalexiou, S. M., & Montanari, A.(2019). Global and regional increase of precipitation extremes under global warming. Water Resources Research, 55,49014914. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR024067
Here we show that, worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming.
– Coumou, D., A. Robinson and S. Rahmstorf, 2013: Global increase in record-breaking monthly-mean temperatures. Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0668-1.
All of those links just indicate Earth is in a warming trend. That’s all.
Learn some history man, there has been no increased precipitation in the UK, not even close to historic records.there are vast amounts of data that prove the past was wetter and warmer, high water levels from flood events are marked on bridges and buildings all across Europe and the UK, church records record thousands of deaths, whole towns and villages washed away.climate did not start in 1850 or 1979 so why the obsession with those dates?
How can a tiny addition ‘trace’ gas’ have any effect?
CO2 is required for all life on Earth, but it can’t raise Earth’s temperature.
It seems the graph cannot be enlarged by clicking on it, Roy.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_November_2024_v6.1_20x9-scaled.jpg
Thanks, Nate, but that’s just through November.
Ok good point.
The common appeals to increased stratospheric water vapor and reduced clouds/aerosols have missed the important causative action.
People should not be surprised by the 2024 anomaly as it should already be known that the lower troposphere lags the ocean sea surface temperature by several months.
The 2024 SST average was higher than in 2023.
In 2024 solar irradiance was higher than in 2023, with both years being the highest TSI years in over thirty years.
The ocean warming since 2022 was predicted by me as a function of solar activity above a decadal ocean warming threshold, and it happened.
https://i.postimg.cc/GmTgSCrM/Decadal-Warming-Steps-since-2000.jpg
The 2024 UAH LT anomaly is thus simply following the solar cycle influence on the ocean. The LT anomaly will fall again as the SST declines, following the solar cycle decline. In fact it has already started to do that towards the end of 2024.
Bob, No one really knows how TSI has changed over 30 years. There isn’t consensus on the consensus composites of spaced-based sensor data.
TSI is well correlated with sunspots. “No one really knows,” seems a little exaggerated.
Both step-ups in sst align better with El Ninos than TSI.
Changes in solar irradiance just aren’t that important over decadal timescales. From the IPCC 6AR WG1 TS.2.2 p67:
“Since 1750, changes in the drivers of the climate system
are dominated by the warming influence of increases in
atmospheric GHG concentrations and a cooling influence
from aerosols, both resulting from human activities. In
comparison there has been negligible long-term influence
from solar activity and volcanoes.”
You can also get an approximation for solar irradiance influence from the Stefan-Boltzmann law for the planet:
S=cT^4
where S=solar irradiance, c=constant (albedo, emissivity, SB constant) and T=temperature (surface temperature or brightness temperature, it doesn’t much matter). Then for T=288 K and S=1360 W/m2
dT/dS = T/4S = 0.05 K/(W/m2)
[K=kelvin]
Appell indicates his confusion about the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. The relation between temperature and flux is NON-LINEAR, not linear.
He still won’t understand….
Bob,
The impact of the solar cycles on temperature is easy to check. Smashing the cycles 10-24 to test if there is a systematic increase of global temperatures at the time of the highest solar activity clearly shows that the impact is at best minor. ENSO episodes dominate.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Of7yZ4zPw26ptxB0CqKHkwmJwhZfhgszYsw9O7tdmgk/edit?usp=sharing
The cyclone that will hit the U.S. Midwest is visible in the tropopause.
https://i.ibb.co/jMNqQ55/gfs-hgt-trop-NA-f072-1.png
Robert Cutler.
Could you explain how we don’t know how TSI changes?
It would seem to me that knowing how much energy we are recieving from the sun would be a fundamental variable in the climate models. I always assumed that it was measured and factored in.
Surely it is easy to point a spectrophotometer towards the sun and measure the amount of energy at each wavelength wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum and do a simple calculation to work it out?
The hard bit would be modelling how each frequency interacts with the atmosphere and Earth’s surface.
Mark, TSI can’t be measured from earth. There were early attempts to measure it from mountain tops, and from balloons, but the amount of data collected is small, and not without its own controversies.
Satellites were launched in the late 70’s, but the lifetime of a satellite is about one solar cycle, and all of the various satellites don’t agree, and there’s also a gap in time that was the result of the shuttle disaster.
There are different groups that have used different techniques to create a single composite record of the satellite data. These composites don’t agree.
For a bit more info jump to chapter 8 on this web page. This same info is often found in various peer-reviewed papers.
Long-term TSI reconstructions from proxy data (e.g.14C isotopes) have their own set of problems and vary widely. The IPCC uses a TSI reconstruction with the least amount of variability. You can probably guess why.
Sorry, Forgot to include the link.
https://www.heritage.org/climate/report/the-unreliability-current-global-temperature-and-solar-activity-estimates-and-its
Heritage Foundation is a political advocacy enterprise, a poor source for unbiased science.
Anything from science papers?
Heritage Foundation attempts to counter the nonsense from political groups like the IPCC. But, too often they fail because they haven’t taken the time to learn the basic physics.
“There are different groups that have used different techniques to create a single composite record of the satellite data. These composites don’t agree.”
A comparison of these composite records of TSI would be helpful to see how significant these differences are.
Lets formulate for the Planets Temperatures Comparison THE INITIAL AXIOM.
For two completely identical planets (or moons), which may differ only in size, their respective average surface temperatures (T1) and (T2) in Kelvin, relate as the fourth root of their respective fluxes (Flux1) and (Flux2) in W/m^2:
T1 /T2 = [ (Flux1) /(Flux2) ] ∕ ⁴
Link: https://www.cristos-vournas.com
I can’t believe the tone of the posts The peak was horrendous and in no way reflected a sudden non existent massive rise in Co2 so the only culprit has to be Hunga Tonga. Also despite that peak falling nicely, people seem to be suddenly panicking where they weren’t when it was higher
Alarmists live every day terrified of some imaginary scam. One day, theyll look back from their deathbeds and realize they spent their entire lives panicking over nothing. Truly tragic but also kind of funny.
Average global Water vapor has been increasing more than twice as fast as possible from just average global temperature increase.
The failure to define or describe the most significant event in the history of the satellite record is a glaring failure of science. None of the climate models came even close to predicting this. After more than a year of effort by the best minds in the business, yes, business, of climate prediction, there is no solid explanation. The three most prominent climate predictors, Hansen, Schmidt, and Mann, all claim it is not a “tipping point”. Incremental increase in CO2 is not to blame.
That has not stopped the climate change media from making the most of this. If you wanted proof that climate change is real and already happening, this is it. We have surpassed 1.5 C and beyond. In case anyone thinks this is temporary, we were reminded by the official CNN climate expert, Bill Weir, that 2024 was not only the warmest year in the history of the earth, but it was also the coldest year we will ever see again.
”
The failure to define or describe the most significant event in the history of the satellite record is a glaring failure of science. None of the climate models came even close to predicting this.”
Ugh. Just the usual hyperbole and misinformation from Tim.
Gee I thought the ‘pause’ was the most significant event. What makes this, so far brief, warm excursion significant-er?
Climate models are not designed to predict yearly T variation, only long term trends. For example, they do not predict or know next year’s ENSO states.
And Bill Weir is simply a reporter, not a scientist or climate expert.
Nate, thank you for the compliment. I can always tell what bothers you by the part you leave out. You did not reply directly because people might read the whole thing, and see your comment in context. The ‘pause’ as you state is your problem, not mine. I did not comment on that.
Sometimes a coherent thought requires more than just a sound bite. Here is what you left out:
[After more than a year of effort by the best minds in the business, yes, business, of climate prediction, there is no solid explanation. The three most prominent climate predictors, Hansen, Schmidt, and Mann, all claim it is not a “tipping point”. Incremental increase in CO2 is not to blame.]
I can see why some folks might be embarrassed about Bill Weir, but he is not “simply a reporter”. His official title is Chief Climate Correspondent. He is the face of climate science on CNN. He reports on the science, not just human interest. He presents himself as an expert. There are other science experts in the media making bold statements. CBS News has an entire department making up climate news.
Bill Weir is a reporter who has interviewed climate scientists, who are indeed experts. That does not make Bill Weir an expert, as you claimed, so as to tarnish the actual experts.
The media regularly gets science wrong. And they tend to exaggerate weather phenomena.
I have no idea what ‘tipping points’ you refer to.
Hansen for several years has been predicting climate change acceleration, due to aerosol pollution reductions.
What you declare a ‘glaring failure’ of climate science is, rather, a feature of an active field of science research: the fact that not everything has already been explained.
It will be interesting to see what the next few months brings.
It may take longer than “the next few months” and it won’t be particularly interesting, but we’re already well into the start of the next Monckton Pause.
Dr. Spencer, in 2010 (~fifteen years ago) you wrote:
Since the PDO has been in a negative phase since 2017 while Global LT temperature anomaly has risen by 2X during that period; do you suppose this indicates that climate sensitivity is greater than you anticipated?
Regards.
Except neither you nor anyone else can know if the current rise reflects a sustained increase or just a temporary deviation.
Testing.