Summer 2024 was officially the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest on record. In the United States, fierce heat waves seemed to hit somewhere almost every day.
Phoenix reached 100 degrees for more than 100 days straight. The 2024 Olympic Games started in the midst of a long-running heat wave in Europe that included the three hottest days on record globally, July 21-23. August was Earth’s hottest month in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 175-year record.
Overall, the global average temperature was 2.74 degrees Fahrenheit (1.52 degrees Celsius)above the 20th-century average.
That might seem small, but temperature increases associated with human-induced climate change do not manifest as small—even increases everywhere on the planet. Rather, they result in more frequent and severe episodes of heat waves, as the world saw in 2024.
Every Northern Hemisphere summer since 1979 has been warmer than the region's 20th-century summer average. The chart shows how much warmer ...
