2024: The hottest year ever

Just a few days ago, it was negative 20 degrees Celsius in North America, where I am writing this. It seems implausible that the planet is warming while surrounded by seemingly endless snow. However, scientists recently confirmed what many have suspected: 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded. Recall that the previous record was set just a year earlier, in 2023. The increase year over year was so significant that scientists are asking whether we are witnessing an accelerating rate of global warming.

As if that was not enough, our planet’s average temperature was higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time compared to the 1850s. Based on a 10-year average, the warming was “only” 1.3 degrees Celsius. Breaching 1.5 degrees in 2024 is jarring. Recall that the Paris Agreement aims to keep global temperatures no higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius because exceeding such a threshold will lead to massive negative impacts. So, as 2025 begins, we enter the unchartered territory of planetary warming.

Two events in 2024 in the Philippines highlighted the changes that could be looming. First, there were unusual heat waves during the summer. The World Weather Attribution (WWA) proved that the heatwave was 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than usual because of global warming. Such events are projected to occur more frequently in the future as the planet warms.

The second event was the string of typhoons that occurred within days of each other. Six typhoons hit the country around October to November 2024, an unprecedented occurrence late in the year, leaving a swath of destruction and suffering. The WWA paper authored by Merz and others (2024), aptly titled “Climate change supercharged late typhoon season in the Philippines,” concluded that a warming planet precipitated this event. To make matters worse, the study revealed that the chances of future typhoons making landfall will be 25 percent higher as the planet warms.

If the climatic events in 2024 are a harbinger of things to come, how do we respond? The contrasting events during the summer season and typhoon season suggest what resilience should be like for the country. That is, we must be able to deal with two opposite climate extremes within the same year. Even more challenging is the need to be ready for consecutive typhoons that allow less time for recovery. The old ways of doing things may not work anymore or, at the very least, need major upgrades if we are to face these new challenges.

To navigate such a future successfully, a new kind of partnership among the various sectors of society is needed. From the science and technology side, we need to harness cutting-edge innovations such as generative artificial intelligence and remote sensing capabilities to fit local conditions and culture. Local government actions must be more informed by climate science and less by short-term political gains. We need to find new ways of melding adaptation to current climate hazards while enhancing long-term climate resilience—all of these and more demand that we figure out new ways of collaborating.

On the global political front, there is more uncertainty on how the international community will tackle climate change with a new leadership taking over in the United States. One of the very first orders of President Donald Trump was to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and open up new drilling for oil and gas. While many things will continue as planned, it is inevitable that where the world’s largest economy and most powerful nation goes, there will be ripple effects. Our policymakers and climate negotiators must work with other countries to advance climate action amidst a more adversarial stance from the US.

Climate change is an existential threat to our nation. Bear in mind the words of Dr. Jason Ur of Harvard University: “When we excavate the remains of past civilizations, we rarely find any evidence that they made any attempts to adapt in the face of a changing climate. I view this inflexibility as the real reason for collapse.”

It is pure hubris if we assume that we are immune from such a collapse.

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Dr. Rodel D. Lasco is the executive director of The Oscar M. Lopez Center, a foundation devoted to discovering climate change adaptation solutions. (http://www.omlopezcenter.org/)