Last year was the hottest ever recorded, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released Friday. In 2024, the globe overall saw its warmest average temperatures dating back to the beginning of the global temperature record in 1850, according to the agency. The planet saw average temperatures of 1.46 degrees Celsius, just shy of the Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5-degree ceiling for irreversible damage. A large majority of land surface saw above-average temperatures in 2024, according to NOAA, including record warmth for the Americas, Europe, Africa and Oceania, while it was the second-hottest year on record for Asia and the Arctic. All of the 10 warmest years recorded since 1850 occurred within the last decade, including 2023, which was previously the warmest on record. Carbon dioxide emissions, the primary cause of global warming, saw a projected global increase of about 1 billion metric tons for a total of about 41.6 billion metric tons in 2024, according to an estimate from the World Meteorological Organization. On a press call Friday, Russell Vose, chief of the Product Development Branch at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, suggested the recent El Nino that ended in May was also a likely contributor, as well as reductions in air pollution over the oceans that allowed more sunlight to warm them. Additionally, 2024 was the hottest ever recorded in the contiguous U.S., according to NOAA data. The average annual temperature for the contiguous states was 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest in the 130-year record and more than 3 degrees above average. This marks only the second time both the U.S. and the globe have broken the records the same year. The previous year was 1998, also an El Nino year. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Service similarly found with “virtual certainty” that 2024 was the warmest year on record; but unlike NOAA, it also found that the year exceeded the 1.5-degree limit for the first time. It also found that average global temperatures for both the month of November and boreal autumn were the second warmest on record behind 2023. The year also saw 85 named tropical cyclones, slightly below the previous three decades’ average of 88, but an above-average 18 in the North Atlantic, including Hurricane Helene, which Vose called a “one in a thousand year event.” Vose cautioned that climate change cannot likely be pinpointed as the direct cause of individual storms, saying “individual events have complicated a particular circumstance that need to be sorted out.” However, he said, “we certainly expect to see more rainfall extremes in a warmer world, simply because warmer air can hold more moisture, and in theory, a warmer climate might have worsened some events this year.”