Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface experienced record heat in 2024. See where and by how much – visualised

For every month from January to June 2024, the earth experienced its hottest ever average monthly temperature.

In this six-month period towns and cities across the world recorded record highs as, globally, the monthly average temperature was up by at least 0.1C compared to the last 40 years.

Between July and December 2024, the global average temperature fell just below the record highs recorded in 2023 for the same period.

But many local areas – across every continent on the planet – were still seared by record heat.

Recent Copernicus analysis shows that 2024 was the first calendar year where the average global temperature exceeded 1.5C above its pre-industrial level.

The hottest day in recorded history was on 22 July, with the global average temperature hitting 17.16C.

Daily averages of global mean near-surface air temperature absolute values from the ERA5 global reanalysis dataset, from January 1979.

Guardian graphic. Source: Copernicus

The carbon pollution that humans have emitted into the Earth's atmosphere has trapped sunlight and caused the planet’s temperature to rise.

On top of this, the chart shows temperatures were boosted in the first half of 2024 by the El Niño climate phenomenon. As this died out, temperatures dropped below 2023 levels – but still remained very high.

The western part of the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) saw their hottest January on record in 2024. Parts of the mountain range saw the temperature record smashed by over 5C.

Winter snow cover was low in the mountains, whose rivers supply water to a quarter of humanity.

The HKH glaciers are projected to shrink by 30-50% this century even in a best-case scenario for cutting carbon pollution.

“It is really scary,” said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a climate scientist at Nepal’s International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. “I have seen how glaciers have been receding, lakes have been forming … and white mountains have been turning into black rock faces.”

South America was hit by record-breaking monthly air temperatures in almost every month of 2024, but through March to June temperatures were consistently extreme in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and the Amazonas state of Brazil.

Wildfires swept across the continent in 2024, and drought hit the Amazon. Even the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, went up in flames.

As China experienced its hottest summer on record, parts of the country surpassed their previous average September record by over 5C

Authorities in ‘furnace city’ Chongqing, in central China, launched almost 200 cloud-seeding rockets to artificially bring rain and cool the megacity.

Power grids across the country were strained by a surge in power demand, as people turned on their air-conditioning to seek relief from the heat.

The poles are also heating alarmingly fast. In August 2024, a large swath of Antarctica broke temperature records for that month, with temperatures up to 6.5C above the previous record. This already followed a July that broke historic records for that month.

This time of the year is midwinter for the south pole, and so the temperatures were still below zero – but some days saw temperatures reach 28C above expectations.

From August through to November, stretches of the Arctic from Canada to Russia saw their hottest months on record.

By the end of the summer melt season, in September, the extent of sea ice was at the sixth-lowest level that scientists had ever seen.

They expect the Arctic to see its first ice-free September within the next decade.

In every month of 2024, the the oceans experienced record surface air temperatures. The Atlantic was especially hot in the first half of the year. Parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans broke monthly air temperature records by over 1C for every month.

What that means to people is “an explosion of extreme events of all sorts,” said Regina Rodrigues, an ocean scientist at Brazil’s Federal University of Santa Catarina.