By Kate Abnett and Alison Withers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – This year is "virtually certain" to eclipse 2023 as the world's warmest since records began, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on Thursday.

The data was released ahead of next week's U.N. COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will work to agree on a significant increase in funding to tackle climate change. Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election has dampened expectations for the talks.

C3S indicated that from January to October, the average global temperature had been so high that 2024 was bound to be the world's hottest year – unless the temperature anomaly for the rest of the year drops to near-zero.

"The fundamental, underpinning cause of this year's record is climate change," stated C3S Director Carlo Buontempo.

"The climate is warming, generally. It's warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken," he added.

Scientists noted that 2024 will also be the first year where the planet is more than 1.5C hotter than during the pre-industrial period between 1850-1900, coinciding with the large-scale burning of fossil fuels by humans.

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas are identified as the main cause of global warming.

Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist from ETH Zurich, expressed no surprise at this milestone and urged governments at COP29 to reach stronger commitments to transition their economies away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels.

"The limits that were set in the Paris agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action globally," Seneviratne stated.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5C to avoid severe consequences.

While the world has not yet breached that target, C3S now anticipates that the threshold will be exceeded around 2030.

"It's basically around the corner now," Buontempo commented.

Every fractional increase in temperature contributes to extreme weather.

In October, catastrophic flash floods in Spain resulted in hundreds of casualties, record wildfires devastated Peru, and flooding in Bangladesh destroyed over 1 million tons of rice, driving food prices up. In the U.S., Hurricane Milton was exacerbated by human-caused climate change.

C3S records date back to 1940, which are validated against global temperature records since 1850.