LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — An image released by NASA illustrates record global temperatures in 2024 as the average went up by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.28 degrees Celsius).
If it seemed like you continually heard about the hottest day, or month, or year, it was because temperatures were on a 15-month streak of setting records. The NASA study called that an unprecedented heat streak.
Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record, according to a NASA analysis.
“Once again, the temperature record has been shattered — 2024 was the hottest year since record keeping began in 1880,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centers and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet.”
A map released by NASA (below) depicts global temperature shows how much warmer or cooler each area of the planet was in 2024 compared to the average from 1951 to 1980.
Las Vegas escaped 2023 as the summer got off to a slow start, but it came back with a vengeance in 2024, the hottest summer on record in the valley. June and July were the hottest ever, according to the National Weather Service, and August was the fourth-hottest on record.
On July 7, the temperature reached a scorching 120 degrees, an all-time record for Las Vegas.
July 6-12 was a seven-day stretch that’s hard to forget. With seven days at or above 115 degrees, Las Vegas broke the previous record of four days (2005, 1940).
NASA scientists further estimate Earth in 2024 was about 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.65 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1850–1900 average. For more than half of 2024, average temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the baseline, and the annual average, with mathematical uncertainties, may have exceeded the level for the first time.
The bar chart below shows 2024 in context with temperature anomalies since 1880. The values represent surface temperatures averaged over the entire globe for the year.
NASA uses surface air temperature data collected from tens of thousands of meteorological stations, as well as sea surface temperature data acquired by ship- and buoy-based instruments.
A new assessment published earlier this year by scientists at the Colorado School of Mines, the National Science Foundation, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), and NASA further increases confidence in the agency’s global and regional temperature data.
“When changes happen in the climate, you see it first in the global mean, then you see it at the continental scale and then at the regional scale. Now, we’re seeing it at the local level,” according to Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. “The changes occurring in people’s everyday weather experiences have become abundantly clear.”
Comparisons to the planet’s climate history are a wake-up call.
“Temperatures during the warm periods on Earth three million years ago — when sea levels were dozens of feet higher than today — were only around 3 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels,” Schmidt said. “We are halfway to Pliocene-level warmth in just 150 years.”
