New Delhi, March 19 -- Climate change is the most pressing problem humanity will face this century. Tracking how the climate is actually changing has never been more critical.

Today, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published its annual State of the Climate report, which found heat records kept being broken in 2024. It's likely 2024 was the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the Earth's pre-industrial average temperature. In 2024, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit the highest point in the last 800,000 years.

The combination of heat and unchecked emissions, the organisation points out, had serious consequences. Attribution studies found a link between climate change and disasters such as Hurric...