FOR the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it’s been in human history, the European climate agency Copernicus said today.

The agency also said that for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5°C of warming compared to the pre-industrial average.

Director of Copernicus Carlo Buontempo said: “It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying.”

Mr Buontempo said that the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.

He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapour into the air and variations in energy from the sun. 

But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.

“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

News of the record heat comes a day after Republican Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to boost oil drilling and production, was re-elected to the US presidency. 

Last month Oxfam International released a damning new report that revealed how the world’s richest billionaires emit more carbon in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime. 

Campaigners Global Witness said: “Climate justice demands accountability—those fuelling the crisis should pay to repair the damage.”

The next United Nations climate conference, or Cop29, is set to take place in Azerbaijan from November 11-22. Talks are unlikely to address activist demands to tackle the damage being caused to the climate by the rich or warfare — which has a significant impact on global emissions.

A 2022 report by the Conflict and Environment Observatory suggested that militaries could account for about 5.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions — but that could be an underestimate.

Another recent study suggested that the first 60 days of the war in Gaza spewed more than 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. 

Scientists say that US military emissions are the largest of any country worldwide, rivalling the entire annual carbon output of some smaller nations, such as Norway or Sweden.