By Kate Abnett and Alison Withers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – It is “almost certain” that this year will eclipse 2023, the hottest in the world since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

The data was released before next week COP29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijanwhere countries will try to agree on a considerable increase in funding to combat climate change. Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has dampened expectations for the negotiations.

C3S said that from January to October, the global average temperature had been so high that 2024 would almost certainly be the hottest year on Earth – unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged as much as to near zero.

“The root cause of this year’s record is climate change,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.

“THE the climate is warmingin general. It is warming on all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see these records being broken,” he said.

Scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet will be more than 1.5C warmer compared to the pre-industrial period of the 1850s-1900s, when humans began burning fossil fuels. on an industrial scale.