global warming

March 21, 2025 9:17 AM

World’s glaciers are losing record ice as global temperatures climb, U.N. says

Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UNESCO report released on Friday. The 9,000 gigatons of ice lost from glaciers since 1975 are roughly equivalent to "an ice block the size of Germany with the thickness of 25 meters," Michael Zemp, director of the Switzerland-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, said during a press conference announcing the report at the UN headquarters i...

January 10, 2025 3:04 PM

2024 was the first year above 1.5C of global warming, scientists say

The world just experienced the first full year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times, scientists said on Friday. The milestone was confirmed by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which said climate change is pushing the planet's temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans. "The trajectory is just incredible," C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, describing how every month in 2024 was the warmest or second-warm...

October 10, 2024 4:07 PM

COP28 President calls on parties to implement UAE Consensus

Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE's Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President, today called on nations to once again "unite, act and deliver" at COP29 in Baku to build on the mandate of last year's historic UAE Consensus, which represents the "road back to Paris". The UAE Consensus "represents the defining roadmap for achieving the ambition of the Paris Agreement," Al Jaber said in an address at the opening session of Pre-COP. "As we gather against a backdrop of continuing g...

September 25, 2024 5:46 PM

Climate change doubles chance of floods like those in Central Europe, report says

Climate change has made downpours like the one that caused devastating floods in central Europe this month twice as likely to occur, a report said on Wednesday, as its scientific authors urged policymakers to act to stop global warming. The worst flooding to hit central Europe in at least two decades has left 24 people dead, with towns strewn with mud and debris, buildings damaged, bridges collapsed and authorities left with a bill for repairs that runs into billions of dollars. The report fro...

July 31, 2024 3:35 PM

World’s forests failed to curb 2023 climate emissions, study finds

Forests and other land ecosystems failed to curb climate change in 2023 as intense drought in the Amazon rainforest and record wildfires in Canada hampered their natural ability to absorb carbon dioxide, according to a study presented on Monday. That means a record amount of carbon dioxide entered Earth's atmosphere last year, further feeding global warming, the researchers said. Plant life helps to slow climate change by taking in huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas drivin...

June 20, 2024 6:33 PM

Millions sweltering under extreme heat worldwide as summer arrives

Dangerous heatwaves are scorching cities on four continents as the Northern Hemisphere marks the first day of summer, a sign that climate change may again bring about record-breaking heat that could surpass last summer as the warmest in 2,000 years. Countries around the Mediterranean have endured another week of blistering high temperatures that have contributed to forest fires from Portugal to Greece and along the northern coast of Africa in Algeria, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and ...

June 6, 2024 12:54 PM

World hits streak of record temperatures as UN warns of ‘climate hell’

Each of the past 12 months ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, the EU's climate change monitoring service said on Wednesday, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert "climate hell". The average global temperature for the 12-month period to the end of May was 1.63 degrees Celsius (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average - making it the warmest such period since record-keeping began in 1940, the Copernicus Climate Chan...

May 23, 2024 3:30 PM

‘Boiling not warming’: Marine life suffers as Thai sea temperatures hit record

Aquatic life from coral reefs to fish in the Thailand's eastern gulf coast is suffering as sea surface temperatures hit record highs this month amid a regional heatwave, worrying scientists and local communities. The once vibrant and colourful corals, about five metres (16 feet) underwater, have turned white in a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, a sign that their health was deteriorating, due to higher water temperatures, scientists say. Sea surface temperatures in the East...