2024 was the warmest year on record, according to climate experts at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But when it comes to weather, Northeast Ohio fared better than other parts of the country.
Global temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than temperatures before industrialization in the 1800s, with global emissions largely contributing to the warming.
"Of course, there's been concentrations of gases like carbon dioxide, which is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels," said Russ Vose, Chief, Monitoring and Assessment Branch at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. "Methane and nitrous oxide are also up about 150% and 25%."
Other factors contributed to this warming, Vose said, including reduced cloud cover and El Niño, which increased temperatures over the Eastern Pacific, making it easier for temperatures on land to rise.
But global warming will only continue to increase if emissions are not reduced, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"We anticipate future global warming as long as we are emitting greenhouse gases," Schmidt said. "Until we get to net zero, we will not get a leveling off of global temperature. And so that will mean temperature will continue to rise as long as we continue to emit effectively carbon dioxide."
Northeast Ohio's fared better amid rising temperatures
As the planet warms, NOAA says the likelihood for frequent, severe weather events increases. Nationally, the record-breaking warming brought increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic and less ice cover on the Great Lakes, according to NOAA data.
Northeast Ohio, however faired better when it came to weather, Physics Professor at Case Western Reserve Cyrus Taylor said.
"There'll be increased major rainstorms lately, we see flooding like that and potential for for heatwaves and so on," Taylor said, "but compared to much of the rest of the country and world, we're actually going to be relatively moderately impacted."
In 2024, the region also saw an extended growing season, warmer winter temperatures on Lake Erie and an increased number of ticks, Taylor said.
With the 1.5 degrees in warming, the planet reached the threshold established by the Paris Agreement in 2015.
But the dangerous climate effects aren't eminent in the region, Taylor said, as the Paris Agreement warns against a series of years at temperatures at the level of 2024.
"Nothing terrible is going to happen immediately because you passed that single goal, but everything is expected to get dramatically worse, the warmer and warmer it gets," Taylor said. "This is sort of a first fruits of what's to come."
Taylor says global temperatures are still trending upward overall, and emission reduction is essential to avoid catastrophic weather events brought on by climate change.
Northeast Ohio is largely considered a climate-safe destination as the effects of climate change worsen across the rest of the country. Taylor says, without reducing emissions, even the region's potential as a climate haven could be at risk.
"We're not on the right path, that the kinds of catastrophic events that we're seeing are going to become steadily more common over a steadily larger fraction of the earth," Taylor said, "and that we really need to face up to this reality."
