Tampa and Earth shattering all-time heat records
Jeff Berardelli is WFLA's Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — It'd been a toasty 2024 here in the Tampa Bay Area and all around the globe. In fact, 2024 is virtually certain to be the hottest year on record for Earth , according to ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service.
After the most sweltering summer on record in Tampa, we added another notch to our belt just yesterday. On Wednesday Tampa Airport hit a daily record high of 91 and also an all-time November record high heat index of 101.
The added 100+ heat index day on Wednesday puts Tampa's total number of days with a heat index (temperature plus humidity) of at least 100 degrees at 100 days on the button. That breaks the old record of 88 set in 2023 and 2022.
For the Tampa Bay Area, it does not appear that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, but for many neighborhoods, it will be a top 5 warmest year.
However, for the planet, there has never been a year so hot as long as records have been kept. For ECMWF Copernicus, that record dates back to around 1940 other records like NOAA go back to around 1850.
October 2024 was 1.65°C above the pre-industrial level and was the 15th month in a 16-month period for which the global average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
While the planet did overshoot the 1.5C threshold this year, it does not mean that we technically failed – yet. There is a chance that global temperatures will fall below +1.5C next year as a cool Pacific La Niña event is forming.
But in the longer term breaching the 1.5C threshold now seems inevitable as we continue to pour heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
Because of our human footprint, global temperatures this warm have likely not been experienced on Earth in over 120,000 years. And of course, these hotter temperatures supply extra energy and moisture to make for stronger storms, bigger floods, and hotter heat waves.
The only way to stop the warming and bring temperatures back down to pre-industrial levels is to slow our use of fossil fuels.
