Climate change is the long-term shift in the Earth’s average temperatures and weather conditions.
The world has been warming up quickly over the past 100 years or so. As a result, weather patterns are changing.
Between 2015 and 2024, global temperatures were on average around 1.28C above those of the late 19th Century, according to the European Copernicus climate service, external.
Since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, the UK Met Office says.
The year 2024 was the world’s hottest on record, with climate change mainly responsible for the high temperatures.
It was also the first calendar year to surpass 1.5C of warming compared to pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus.
