TOKYO: 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.
Source: CNA
