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2024 was hottest year on record: Weather agencies
Indonesia had its hottest April in more than four decades last year as extreme heat swept parts of Asia.
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Women cool off from buckets filled with water supplied by the local officials amid the drought season in Lhoknga, Aceh on May 12, 2024. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
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ndonesia experienced its hottest year on record in 2024, the country's weather agency said on Friday, matching several other nations which have reported similar rises in temperature.
The average air temperature in 2024 was 27.5 degrees Celsius, some 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than between 1991 and 2020, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) posted on its website Friday.
It said the data was obtained from 113 monitoring posts across the country.
Indonesia had its hottest April in more than four decades last year as extreme heat swept parts of Asia.
Globally, scientists warn extreme heat will become more frequent and intense because of human-induced climate change. The United Nations said Monday that 2024 was set to be the hottest year ever recorded worldwide.
Both China and India have already said the year was their hottest in decades.
The weather service in Hong Kong also reported that last year was the city’s hottest year since records began 140 years ago.
The Hong Kong Observatory said it "has confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year in Hong Kong since records began in 1884, with an annual mean temperature of 24.8 degrees Celsius, 1.3 degrees above the 1991-2020 normal".
Temperatures were higher than normal in all but one month last year, and April and October set new records in monthly mean temperature, the Hong Kong Observatory said on Friday.
The Chinese city also saw its warmest autumn on record in 2024, with the mean temperature between September and November at 26.5 degrees Celsius.
The top three warmest years in Hong Kong's history were all recorded after 2018.
Hong Kong is expected to see "normal" to "above normal" temperatures in the first three months of this year, the observatory said.
"Against the backdrop of climate warming, January-March temperatures in Hong Kong exhibit a significant long-term increasing trend," it added.
Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is not just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
Impacts are wide-ranging, deadly and increasingly costly, damaging property and destroying crops.
