A European climate agency says it is virtually certain that this year will be the warmest on record.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service released its latest data on Thursday.

The agency says the average global temperature for the first 10 months of 2024 stood at 15.36 degrees Celsius. That's 0.16 degrees warmer than the average for the same period in 2023.

The agency points out that for 2024 to not be the warmest on record, the average temperature for the rest of the year would have to be almost zero. It concludes that it is virtually certain that 2024 will be the first year with an average temperature more than 1.5 degrees higher than the pre-industrial level.

The agency says, "This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29."

Under the 2015 Paris agreement, nations around the world agreed to try to limit the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels over the long term. The COP29 conference is scheduled to start in Azerbaijan next Monday in Azerbaijan, with a focus on stepped-up efforts to curtail global warming.