BRUSSELS -- November 2024 was the second warmest November globally, confirming expectations that 2024 will be the warmest year on record, EU's climate service Copernicus said on Monday.

November 2024 was 1.62 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, only behind November 2023, according to the agency.

"At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record and more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level," Copernicus said in a statement.

Its findings are based on a dataset that uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations around the world.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said that the 2024 data "does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever."

The Paris Agreement seeks to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration to cap it at 1.5 degrees by the end of this century. However, these targets are based on the average global temperature over a 20- or 30-year period, rather than annual fluctuations.

The European climate body also said that the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its lowest monthly level in November, measuring 10 percent below average, continuing a series of historically large negative anomalies observed throughout 2023 and 2024.

November was the 16th month in a 17-month period during which the global average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Copernicus added.