Record 2024 Temperatures Accelerate Ice Loss, Rise in Sea Levels, UN Weather Body Says 

New York University student researchers sit on a rock overlooking the Helheim glacier in Greenland, Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
New York University student researchers sit on a rock overlooking the Helheim glacier in Greenland, Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
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Record 2024 Temperatures Accelerate Ice Loss, Rise in Sea Levels, UN Weather Body Says 

New York University student researchers sit on a rock overlooking the Helheim glacier in Greenland, Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
New York University student researchers sit on a rock overlooking the Helheim glacier in Greenland, Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)

Record greenhouse gas levels helped bring temperatures to an all-time high in 2024, accelerating glacier and sea ice loss, raising sea levels and edging the world closer to a key warming threshold, the UN weather body said on Wednesday.

Annual average mean temperatures stood at 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels last year, surpassing the previous 2023 record by 0.1C, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its annual climate report.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to strive to limit temperature increases to within 1.5C above the 1850-1900 average.

Preliminary estimates put the current long-term average increase at between 1.34-1.41C, closing in on but not yet exceeding the Paris threshold, the WMO said.

"One thing to point out very clearly is that one single year above 1.5 degrees doesn't mean that the level mentioned in the Paris agreement had been formally exceeded," said John Kennedy, WMO's scientific coordinator and lead author of the report.

But uncertainty ranges in the data mean that it cannot be ruled out, he said during a briefing.

The report said other factors could also have driven global temperature rises last year, including changes in the solar cycle, a massive volcanic eruption and a decrease in cooling aerosols.

While a small number of regions saw temperatures fall, extreme weather wreaked havoc across the globe, with droughts causing food shortages and floods and wildfires forcing the displacement of 800,000 people, the highest since records began in 2008.

Ocean heat also reached its highest on record and the rate of warming is accelerating, with rising ocean CO2 concentrations also driving up acidification levels.

Glaciers and sea ice continued to melt at a rapid rate, which in turn pushed sea levels to a new high. From 2015 to 2024, sea levels have risen by an average of 4.7 millimeters a year, compared to 2.1mm from 1993 to 2002, WMO data showed.

Kennedy also warned of the long-term implications of melting ice in Arctic and Antarctic regions.

"Changes in those regions potentially can affect the kind of overall circulation of the oceans, which affect climate around the world," he said. "What happens in the poles doesn't necessarily stay at the poles."



Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
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Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)

A coalition backed by Google, Stripe and Shopify will spend $1.7 million to buy carbon removal credits from three early stage firms on behalf of the tech giants to help scale up the nascent markets, an executive told Reuters.

The world is expected to need to suck between five and 10 billion tons a year of carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by mid-century to reach its climate goals, yet at the moment most technologies are small scale.

The coalition, called Frontier, is also backed by H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Salesforce, among others.

The group, which aggregates demand from its members, will spend $1.7 million to buy credits from US-firm Karbonetiq, Italy-based Limenet and Canadian firm pHathom.

By contracting to buy early, the firms are better able to hire, raise finance and get the technologies off the ground, said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

"It allows companies to demonstrate commercial viability," she said.

Frontier's support for these early stage firms, which aim to lock emissions away in the ocean or in rocks and industrial waste, marks its fifth series of commitments.

Frontier, which was set up in 2022, aims to invest at least $1 billion in carbon removal credits between 2022 and 2030. It has already committed $600 million, some on the series of pre-purchases and the bulk on a series of off-take agreements with larger firms. Last week, it agreed to pay $41 million for 116,000 tons from waste biomass firm Arbor.

For oceans, the aim is to increase the alkalinity of the water, helping it to lock away more carbon emissions. This is often done by adding "quicklime", made from limestone.

For the mineralization technologies, meanwhile, projects attempt to speed up the process whereby rocks and industrial waste naturally absorb carbon dioxide, for example by crushing up the material to create a larger surface area.

Bebbington said both technologies had the potential to be impactful because they could be scaled quickly and cheaply.

"We think (they) are extremely compelling from that really cheap at really large scale perspective."