2024 was the warmest on record. Just ask Salt Lake City (and planet Earth)

It’s official: Earth has a new hottest year on record.

So does Utah’s capital.

Salt Lake City’s average temperature in 2024 was 57.3 degrees. That’s nearly a full degree warmer than the previous record, and it illustrates how the climate is shifting. All of Salt Lake City’s 10 warmest years have happened since 2012, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records dating back to 1875.

“What that tells me is that this warming is going to continue,” said Christie Pondell, an assistant professor of environmental science at Utah Tech University.

“Accept the fact that the childhood you had is not the childhood your kids will have, and it's not the childhood your grandkids will have.”

Temperatures across Utah were significantly warmer last year than the state’s historical averages from 1991-2020. Salt Lake City temperatures were 2.6 degrees warmer than its 30-year normal. In St. George, Cedar City and Bountiful, they were 2.5, 3.1 and 3.8 degrees above average, respectively.

For the second straight year, Earth has broken its heat record. 2024 was also the warmest year for the contiguous United States and caps the hottest two-year and five-year periods on record for the lower 48. Utah had its second-warmest year ever in 2024, just one-hundredth of a degree off its previous high.

These are just the latest signs of how global warming — driven by greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use — impacts life in Utah and makes previously unprecedented heat events the new normal.

“It's real. The data speak for themselves,” said Karin Gleason, chief of monitoring for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

“The data out there, regardless of how you construct them and put them together, are showing that there's definitely this signal of warming.”

Even so, recent years have exceeded some of the dire predictions that climate models have made. NOAA’s global outlook from the beginning of 2024 originally estimated just a one-in-three chance of it becoming the warmest year on record.

Part of what pushed 2024 into the record books was that it started out so hot from the previous year, Gleason said. Additionally, La Niña — the cool end of a temperature cycle in the Pacific Ocean — was expected to take hold by mid-year, but did not materialize until December.

Utah’s increasing heat (records toppled this past summer) brings negative impacts on drought, wildfires and the water supply because of increased evaporation.

“Utah is a drier, more arid part of the country, and having additional heat on top of [normal] means there's probably even less water resources available, even when there are wetter periods,” Gleason said.

NOAA

The heat was particularly relentless in St. George, where temperatures hit at least 100 degrees for 52 consecutive days. In one July weekend, three hikers died in heat-related incidents at national and state parks in southern Utah. Salt Lake City reached 106 degrees on July 11 — just one degree shy of its all-time heat record. It also registered the city’s first-ever October day to hit 90 degrees.

While extreme temperatures may be the most visible signs of how alarming the year was, much of Utah’s overall heat average was driven by increased overnight lows. Salt Lake City, Bountiful, Provo and Kanab all had their warmest minimum temperatures on record.

In some cases, rising overnight lows outpaced daytime highs. Cedar City, for example, had lows that were 4 degrees warmer than its historical average, while the city’s highs were 2.1 degrees warmer than average. Other high-elevation locations like Park City, Monticello and Capitol Reef National Park also saw bigger anomalies in their minimum temperatures than their maximums.

“The daytime temperature getting hotter is a concern, but the fact that the nighttime temperature is now hotter, I think, is even more concerning,” Pondell said, “because we don't have that ability to cool down anymore.”

That means vulnerable groups — such as young children, the elderly and those who don’t have access to air conditioning — and the ecosystem broadly can’t get relief from the scorching heat of the day.

One of the best mitigation strategies for cities to combat rising heat is planting trees, Pondell said. But for communities like St. George, where water scarcity might make it hard to justify the irrigation young trees need, she said planting native vegetation and installing shade structures might be the best available option.

Another key for Utahns is to adapt mentally, Pondell said, and wrap our heads around this new reality. It’s important to focus on things under our control, such as helping the community and reaching out to neighbors to make sure they’re OK during heat events. Tangible, immediate actions that can protect people from the effects of climate change are important, she said, especially because it’ll take years to reap the rewards from big-picture actions, like reducing our carbon footprint.

“We're asking [people] to make big lifestyle changes that we won't see the impacts from — but our grandkids might,” Pondell said. “And I think that's hard.”

Looking ahead to 2025, heat trends are expected to continue. However, it might take an unexpected shift back to El Niño to break 2024’s record. NOAA predicts there is just a 4% chance 2025 will set a new global record but a 96% chance it will land among Earth’s top five warmest years.

“I don't think anyone is thinking that 2025 is necessarily going to be [the] warmest,” Gleason said. “But we're going to stay near the top of the pack.”