2024: Hottest Year on Record

Travel Tuesday: Kosovo

Kosovo is home to the Marble Cave (Gadime Cave), a stunning karst limestone cave located near the village of Gadime e Ulët. Discovered in 1966, the cave is famous for its beautiful stalactites, stalagmites, and unique marble formations.

GDP$11.84 billion

Biggest ExportMetals, mineral products, and plastics

Biggest Trading PartnersGermany, Italy, Greece, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia

Political SystemKosovo operates as a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic. The President is the head of state, and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Assembly of Kosovo is unicameral with 120 members.

National Animal The lynx

Next ElectionFebruary 9 (Legislative)

2024: Hottest Year on Record

Research from the EU’s climate service has shown that 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service identified that 2024 had an average global temperature of 15.1°C, meaning that it was 0.74°C above the 1991-2020 average and around 1.60°C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average. The 22 July 2024 also saw a new record set for the highest daily global average temperature, at 17.16°C.

This comes against the target laid out during the Paris COP21 conference in 2015 which saw leaders around the world pledge to keep global warming within a 1.5C threshold of preindustrial levels. With each of the last 10 years growing increasingly warmer, 2024 ended up being the first calendar year that breached this target.

Here, the survey said that “while this does not mean we have breached the limit set by the Paris Agreement — this refers to temperature anomalies averaged over at least 20 years — it underscores that global temperatures are rising beyond what modern humans have ever experienced”.

Greenhouse gas levels were also seen to rise over 2024. For example, over the course of last year carbon dioxide concentrations were estimated to be 2.9 ppm higher than in 2023. This comes as one of the directors of the survey said that the “data points clearly to a steady global increase of greenhouse gas emissions and these remain the main agent of climate change.”

It also showed that water vapour levels in the atmosphere reached record highs last year being about 5% above the 1991–2020 average. This is important given that the combination of extreme temperatures and high humidity feed into heat stress which the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that 44% of the globe was affected by over the course of July.

Speaking on this development, the Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that “This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29.”

The news follows the most recent COP 29 held in Baku, Azerbaijan which saw delegates commit to triple the funding available for developing countries to navigate climate change and negotiations around the carbon credit system. For many reasons however the summit was marred in controversy, and as one Bloomberg reporter wrote “we learned more about where countries have drawn their red lines on climate cooperation” with for example China refusing to become an official donor of climate finance.

For more on the conference, the BBC published a useful summary https://www.bbc.co.uk