Sea levels rose faster than expected around the world in 2024 – the Earth’s hottest year on record, according to new findings from the United States’ NASA space agency, which attributed the rise to warming oceans and melting glaciers.

“With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth’s expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades,” NASA’s Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programmes and the Integrated Earth System Observatory, said on Thursday.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA, said the rise in the world’s oceans last year was “higher than expected”, and while changes take place each year, what has become clear is that the “rate of rise is getting faster and faster”.

According to the NASA-led study of the information sourced via the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, the rate of sea level rise last year was 0.59cm (0.23 inches) per year – higher than an initial expected estimate of 0.43cm (0.17 inches) per year.

Advertisement

Satellite recordings of ocean height started in 1993, and in the three decades up to 2023, the rate of sea level rise has more than doubled, with average sea levels around the globe rising by 10cm (3.93 inches) in total, according to NASA.

Rising sea levels are among the consequences of human-induced climate change, and oceans have risen in line with the increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature – a change which itself is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

NASA said trends from recent years showed additional water from land due to melting ice sheets and glaciers to be the biggest contributor, accounting for two-thirds of sea level rise.

In 2024, however, the increased rise in sea levels was largely driven by the thermal expansion of water – when ocean water expands as it warms – which accounts for about two-thirds of the increase.

The UN has warned of threats to vast numbers of people living on islands or along coastlines due to rising sea levels, with low-lying coastal areas of India, Bangladesh, China and the Netherlands flagged as areas of particular concern, as well as island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.