October 2024 second-warmest in 175 years: NOAA
An annotated map of the world plotted with the most significant climate events of October 2024. Photo: NOAA/NCEI
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Earth saw another unusually warm month, with October 2024 ranking as the second-warmest October in NOAA’s 175-year global climate record.
October also added another balmy month to 2024, which is almost certainly going to be Earth’s warmest year on record, said scientists at the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The average global temperature for October was 1.32 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average of 14.0 C, ranking as the world’s second-warmest October on record — just 0.05 C cooler than the record-warm October 2023.
Regionally, North America had its warmest October on record while South America and Oceania each had their second-warmest October.
The year-to-date global surface temperature was 1.28 C above the 20th-century average, making it the warmest such period on record. Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America each had their warmest such YTD period.
The NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Outlook said there is a greater than 99 per cent chance that 2024 will rank as the world’s warmest year on record.
October’s global sea ice extent (coverage) was the smallest in the 46-year record — 3.24 million square kilometres below the 1991 to 2020 average. Arctic sea ice extent was below average (by 1.55 million square km), ranking fourth-lowest on record, while Antarctic extent was also below average (by 1.68 million square km), ranking second-lowest on record.
The Atlantic basin saw five tropical cyclones during October, including Hurricane Milton, which peaked as a Category 5 storm and made landfall just south of Tampa Bay. Through the end of October there were 70 named year-to-date storms worldwide in 2024, totaling six less storms than the long-term average.
