Algeria records highest temperatures in 2024 as global warming breaches 1.5C

European Union data has revealed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with annual global temperatures breaching the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time. 

The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above pre-industrial levels, up by 0.1C on the previous year, which had also been the hottest year on record.

According to the data, 44 percent of the planet was affected by "strong to extreme heat stress",  defined as a "feels like" temperature exceeding 32 degrees, with 24 July marking the hottest day on record.

Swathes of the Middle East and North Africa saw more days than average of "extreme heat stress", with Algeria recording the highest "feels like" temperature of 59.1 degrees. 

This is up from the previous year, which saw temperatures soar to 51 degrees in Algeria, 49°C in Tunisia and 46°C in Jordan.

The rise has prompted water shortages, droughts, rolling power outages and the deaths of Sudanese refugees and Hajj pilgrims.

“Climate models predict that by the second half of this century, up to 600 million people in the MENA region could regularly experience heatwaves exceeding 56°C, lasting for several weeks at a time, which will become the new norm if no action is taken,” Hanen Keskes, political campaigns lead at Greenpeace MENA, told Middle East Eye.

Water stress

Soaring temperatures and scarce rainfall have generated dire water shortages throughout the Middle East. By 2050, it is estimated that every country in the region is set to endure extremely high water stress.

Successions of severe heatwaves have left Algeria one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, with less than 300 cubic metres of water per person per year as of 2019. 

In 2024, the country’s southwest was rocked by protests over water rationing, which was implemented to address historic water shortages that had left taps running dry and dams operating at a third of their capacity.

In July 2023, droughts and record-breaking temperatures sparked wildfires that tore through 10,000 acres of the country and claimed the lives of 69 people in the summer of 2023.

Worsening water scarcity has wreaked havoc on the region’s agriculture, with declining crop yields sending food prices soaring, pushing many into extreme poverty.

“Heatflation” saw tomato prices in Iraq and Morocco rocket in the last year, while in Egypt, onion prices tripled.

“This crisis isn’t just about high temperatures - it’s about the broader environmental and social toll. From flooding to crippling water shortages, vulnerable communities, many already grappling with political and social instability, are bearing the brunt,” Keskes said.

The poorest suffer the most

The risk of soaring temperatures is not evenly distributed, with the poor disproportionately suffering the consequences.

“Climate exacerbates and fuels all of the inequalities, including poverty,” War on Want executive director Asad Rehman said.

“You could say the dominoes are falling, and they’re falling on, of course, the poorest people in the world, and the most vulnerable people.”

Of the 1,300 Hajj pilgrims who died of heat-related causes, 80 percent were unauthorised pilgrims who had no access to cooling tents and water stations and were forced to camp out in temperatures nearing 50 degrees.

Asylum seekers, who are often fleeing crises caused or exacerbated by the climate crisis, are also disproportionately falling victim to soaring temperatures, with dozens of Sudanese refugees dying en route to Egypt. Aid groups said entire families were wiped out.

“Many North Africans resort to irregular migration, embarking on dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean in search of a better future,” Keskes told MEE.

“This pattern of migration highlights the broader issue of global injustice. Those least responsible for climate change - such as marginalised communities in MENA - bear its heaviest burdens, while wealthier nations that contribute the most to global emissions focus on border security rather than equitable solutions,” she added.

Last year’s global climate summit, Cop29, saw fraught negotiations over climate finance.

Developing nations called on rich countries to pay $1.3 trillion a year to help them decarbonise their economies and address the impact of climate breakdown, but the final pledge, which campaigners condemned as a “betrayal”, amounted to just $300bn annually.

“In Baku at Cop29, what the global north did was turn its back on the global south,” Rehman told MEE.

“What they’ve offered developing countries is a vague promise of finance, but it’s primarily debt-creating laws," he said.

Campaigners have highlighted how the world’s wealthiest countries are disproportionately responsible for global emissions, with the world’s poorest bearing the brunt of climate breakdown.

'The most wealthy countries in that region, like Saudi Arabia or the UAE, are the ones who expand their fossil fuel production' 

- Andreas Sieber, 350.org

"Although countries in the Middle East and North Africa contribute less than five percent of global carbon emissions, they are disproportionately impacted by climate change,” Keskes said.

Despite this, five state-owned oil firms from the Middle East - Saudi Aramco, the National Iranian Company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Iraq National Oil Company - are among the 20 companies responsible for a third of all carbon emissions released between 1965 and 2017. 

The oil-producing countries of the Middle East are also the world’s largest per capita carbon emitters, with Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia crowding the top of the table.

“What we see is that the most wealthy countries in that region, like Saudi Arabia or the UAE, are the ones who expand their fossil fuel production and their fossil fuel exports," Andreas Sieber, the associate director of policy and campaigns at anti-fossil fuel group 350.org, told MEE.

“And those countries are, of course, also impacted by the climate crisis, but because of their wealth they are much less affected.”