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The Balkan country’s meteorological office said this week that 2024 might be the hottest year on record.
The average air temperature at the earth’s surface last year was 13.3 degrees Celsius (56 degrees Fahrenheit), “which is 2.3 degrees Celsius higher than the average over the period 1991-2020 and almost 1.0 degrees higher than the previous hottest year – 2023,” says the state-owned hydropower plant. The Meteorological Service said in its report on Friday.
Globally, the UN climate and weather agency said 2024 might be the world’s warmest year on record, ending a decade of unprecedented human-caused heat.
UN leaders and climate scientists blame global heating for a series of catastrophic floods, wildfires, heatwaves and hurricanes around the world in 2024.
Serbia was not spared, experiencing a series of heatwaves in June, July and August.
The Serbian Registry Office recorded a record variety of days wherein temperatures exceeded 35 degrees Celsius, representing the highest variety of tropical nights on record and the lowest variety of frosty and frosty days on record.
Physicist Irina Lazic said that last year Serbia looked more like the Mediterranean region than the Balkans.
“The temperature range in 2024 was typical for the coastal regions of Spain, Italy and Greece in the years 1961–1990,” wrote Lazic, a member of the Faculty of Physics in Belgrade, for the climate website Klima 101.
A Met Office report shows that every one 10 hottest years on record in Serbia occurred in 2000, an indication that global warming is accelerating.
Of the 20 hottest, all were from the twenty first century, except two: 1994 and 1951.
The town of Negotin in eastern Serbia, known for very cold winters, recorded the lowest snowfall on record in 2024, reaching just two centimeters.
Several weather stations reported the lowest variety of snow days on record.
The 2015 Paris Climate Accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2.0°C above pre-industrial levels – and where possible to 1.5°C.
Last year, the average global temperature was 1.45°C warmer than before the industrial revolution, when humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels.
The UN World Meteorological Organization is scheduled to publish consolidated global temperature data for 2024 in January.
© 2025 AFP
Quote: Serbia says 2024 was hottest year on record (2025, January 5) retrieved January 5, 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-01-serbia-hottest-year-history.html
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