Japan’s weather agency said on Monday (Jan 6) that last year was the hottest since records began, mirroring other nations as ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions fuel climate change.
Worldwide, 2024 was expected to have been the warmest recorded, the United Nations’ weather and climate agency said last week, capping a decade of unprecedented heat and other types of extreme weather.
Across Japan, the average temperatures from January through December were 1.48 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
This was the most since the agency started releasing data in 1898 and higher than the previous year’s record, which exceeded the average by 1.29 degrees Celsius.
Long term, “Japan’s temperature has been rising in a pace of 1.40 Celsius per century, and high temperatures have been observed in particular since the 1990s”, the JMA said.
Kaoru Takahashi, the JMA official in charge of weather information, told AFP that climate change was a “factor”.
Westerlies – prevailing west-to-east winds – also travelled further north, bringing warmer air, he said.
Japan’s summer last year was already the joint hottest on record – equalling the level seen in 2023 – while autumn was the warmest since records began.
The famous snowcap of Mount Fuji was also absent for the longest recorded period in 2024, not appearing until early November, compared with the average of early October.
Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.
In September last year, floods and landslides killed 16 people in the remote Noto Peninsula in central Japan, already hit by a major earthquake on Jan 1, 2024.
And in November, heavy rains prompted authorities to urge hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.
Other countries, including India, Indonesia, China, Germany and Brazil, also saw temperature records in 2024.
Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/japan-2024-hottest-year-record-climate-change-4840126