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michael mann
'Very Fabric of Life' at Risk Without Urgent Action to End Fossil Fuel Era
"We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt."
Oct 08, 2024
As Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida's Gulf Coast, demonstrating the dangers of global warming, international scientists on Tuesday published a terrifying annual analysis that highlights the need to swiftly phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.
"Our aim in the present article is to communicate directly to researchers, policymakers, and the public," the coalition wrote in BioScience. "As scientists and academics, we feel it is our moral duty and that of our institutions to alert humanity to the growing threats that we face as clearly as possible and to show leadership in addressing them."
"We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis," warned the 14 experts from Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Their latest edition, "The 2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth," shows that 25 of the 35 "planetary vital signs" the team uses to track the climate emergency are at record extremes. They include U.S.-heat related mortality, fossil fuel subsidies, coal and oil consumption, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, per capita meat consumption, global tree cover loss due to fires, ocean acidity and heat content change, glacier thickness change, and ice mass change in Antarctica and Greenland.
"Ecological overshoot, taking more than the Earth can safely give, has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives."
The report emphasizes that "human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%."
"For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change," the publication notes. "For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies."
"Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the three hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7°C peak warming by 2100," the article adds. "Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering."
Oregon State University professor William Ripple, who led the team with Christopher Wolf of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates, said in a Tuesday statement that "ecological overshoot, taking more than the Earth can safely give, has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives."
"We're already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval," Ripple stressed. "For example, Hurricane Helene caused more than 200 deaths in the southeastern United States and massive flooding in a North Carolina mountain area thought to be a safe haven from climate change."
"Since the publication of our 2023 report, multiple climate-related disasters have taken place, including a series of heatwaves across Asia that killed more than a thousand people and led to temperatures reaching 122°F in parts of India," he continued. "Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions. That would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability, possibly even partial societal collapse."
To avoid that dark future, the article argues, "we need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice."
The assessment—whose authors include Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania, Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University, and Stefan Rahmstorf and Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research—comes just over a month away from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP29, which is scheduled for November 11-22 in Azerbaijan.
Pointing to previous summits, Wolf said Tuesday that "despite six reports from the International Panel on Climate Change, hundreds of other reports, tens of thousands of scientific papers, and 28 annual meetings of the U.N.'s Conference of the Parties, the world has made very little headway on climate change."
"Humanity's future depends on creativity, moral fiber, and perseverance," he warned. "If future generations are to inherit the world they deserve, decisive action is needed, and fast."
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Climate Experts Rebuke Musk Over 'Dumbest' Interview With Trump
"Why is Musk doing this?" asked 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben. "My only conjecture is that he hopes the world will become barren enough that we simply have to pony up for his big trip to Mars."
Aug 14, 2024
Elon Musk thinks he knows more about climate issues than the entire staff of a major international newspaper, but on Wednesday, experts on the planetary emergency offered the billionaire businessman a reality check.
Responding to a Guardian article critical of Monday's glitch- and lie-laden interview of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Musk's X social media platform, Musk proclaimed that "my little fingernail knows more about climate issues than the entire staff of The Guardian."
Bill McKibben, who co-founded the climate action group 350.org, is quoted in that article calling the Musk-Trump interview "the dumbest climate conversation of all time."
Responding to Musk's diss, McKibben said Wednesday on X that he would "be pleased to debate you (or your little fingernail) at any point about why we don't, in fact, have a century to spare in solving this crisis."
Climate scientist Michael Mann, who calls Musk a "climate denier" in the Guardian piece, also weighed in, telling Musk on X that "if you've got a beef, take it up with me."
Some X users noted that once upon a time, Musk—who is the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla—acknowledged the urgency of the climate crisis. In 2018, he said: "Why not go renewable now and avoid [the] increasing risk of climate catastrophe? Betting that science is wrong and oil companies are right, is the dumbest experiment in history, by far."
In an opinion piece published Tuesday by Common Dreams, McKibben noted that after Musk—who endorsed Trump and created a pro-Trump super political action committee—the former president's biggest funder may be fracking billionaire Harold Hamm.
"He took Trump up on his offer that for a billion dollars he'd give the oil industry whatever it wanted, and he's been working the phones ever since," McKibben wrote of Hamm.
Trump returned the favor by calling Hamm "so boring to be with... because all he wants to talk about is oil and gas."
During his first White House run, Trump infamously called climate change "a Chinese hoax." He staffed his administration with climate deniers and rolled back previous administrations' climate policies under the "drill, baby, drill" mantra popularized by former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
"Why is Musk doing this?" McKibben asked. "Who knows? After all, the success of Tesla has been mostly driven by government subsidy that grows out of the effort to slow the growth of carbon in the atmosphere."
"My only conjecture," McKibben added, "is that he hopes the world will become barren enough that we simply have to pony up for his big trip to Mars."
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Scientists Won't Classify Anthropocene as 'Epoch' Yet, But Say Human Impact Undeniable
The Anthropocene is classified as a geological "event" at this point—as are mass extinctions and rapid expansions of biodiversity.
Mar 05, 2024
The idea underpinning scientists' push to recognize the current time period as a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene dates back more than 100 years, but on Tuesday, a committee of experts voted down the proposal to officially declare a new age defined by human beings' impact on the Earth.
The panel, organized by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), was tasked with weighing whether the Holocene—the epoch that began at the close of the last ice age, more than 11,000 years ago—has ended, and if so, when precisely the Anthropocene began.
Another group, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), had previously posed that an Anthropocene—an epoch during which "the scale and character of human activities have become so great as to compete with natural geological and geophysical forces," as British geologist Robert Lionel Sherlock argued in 1922—began in the mid-20th century.
Around that period, the U.S. and other countries began testing nuclear weapons while fossil fuel production began ramping up significantly, intensifying planetary heating, ocean acidification, and other climate impacts.
AWG presented geological evidence compiled at Crawford Lake in Canada, where radioactive isotopes dating back to the 1950s are embedded in the lake bed, to argue in favor of an Anthropocene that began decades ago.
Several members of the IUGS committee found that the time period proposed began too recently and "failed to capture the earlier impact of humans during, say, the development of farming or the onset of the Industrial Revolution," as Yale Environment 360 noted.
AWG members Simon Turner of University College London and Colin Waters of the University of Leicester told New Scientist Tuesday that the voting result was "very disappointing given the huge contribution by AWG to develop our case."
"All these lines of evidence indicate that the Anthropocene, though currently brief, is—we emphasize—of sufficient scale and importance to be represented on the Geological Time Scale," they said.
The academics who opposed recognizing a new geological epoch in the 12-4 vote are among the scientists who "prefer to describe the Anthropocene as an 'event,' not an 'epoch,'" The New York Times reported.
Geological "events" don't appear on the official Geological Time Scale, "yet many of the planet's most significant happenings are called events, including mass extinctions, rapid expansions of biodiversity, and the filling of Earth's skies with oxygen 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago," according to the Times.
Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at University of Pennsylvania, called the disagreement over the terminology "a tempest in a teapot" that won't stop scientists from identifying the current time period as one in which humans are significantly and negatively impacting the planet.
While the scientific community is not yet labeling the current time period as a new epoch, committee member Jan Piotrowski of Aarhus University in Denmark told the Times, "Our impact is here to stay and to be recognizable in the future in the geological record."
"There is absolutely no question about this," Piotrowski said.
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170 Scientists Urge Biden to Kill 'Staggering' LNG Buildout
Experts warn that expanding liquefied natural gas infrastructure will put the United States "on a continued path toward escalating climate chaos."
Dec 19, 2023
Echoing recent calls from frontline leaders, green groups, and healthcare workers, 170 scientists on Tuesday pressured U.S. President Joe Biden to reject a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Louisiana known as CP2 and other pending LNG projects.
"We are scientists who write to you with ever-increasing urgency as our climate continues to deteriorate to implore you to stop the dash to increase exports of liquified natural gas (LNG)," wrote the scientists, including Rose Abramoff, Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, Peter Kalmus, Michael Mann, Sandra Steingraber, Farhana Sultana, and Aradhna Tripati.
While stressing their opposition to Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) project, they also emphasized that "the magnitude of the proposed buildout of LNG over the next several years is staggering."
"As scientists we are telling you in clear and unambiguous terms that approving CP2 and other LNG projects will undermine your stated goals of meaningfully addressing the climate crisis."
"For years, the science has been overwhelmingly clear that we must stop expanding fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure and rapidly transition to renewable energy. We have simply no runway left and little margin for error," the scientists warned. "In fact, we are rapidly passing tipping points that are further escalating the climate crisis."
"Altogether, the science to date shows that spiraling emissions of the climate super-pollutant methane are a major contributor to the ongoing failure to meet agreed-upon global emissions targets and stabilize the climate," they explained. "The science also shows that LNG facilities are inherently leaky operations and prodigious emitters of methane."
Their letter cites a forthcoming study by Howarth, a Cornell University scientist, that shows LNG is at least 24% worse for the climate than coal.
CP2 alone would produce over 20 times more planet-heating pollution than ConocoPhillips' Willow oil project in Alaska, which the Biden administration is also under fire for greenlighting. The letter highlights that "these climate-wrecking emissions are on top of prodigious amounts of toxic air pollutants, including carcinogenic benzene, released into local environments both from the LNG facilities themselves and the upstream drilling and fracking operations that feed them."
"LNG plants and their associated infrastructure pose serious health harms to surrounding communities and worsen environmental injustice," the scientists pointed out. "These facilities are disproportionately located in communities of color and low-income communities on the Gulf Coast already overburdened with pollution."
"You have often said that your policies will be guided by listening to the science," they wrote to Biden. "As scientists we are telling you in clear and unambiguous terms that approving CP2 and other LNG projects will undermine your stated goals of meaningfully addressing the climate crisis and put us on a continued path toward escalating climate chaos. We implore you to turn back from this course, reject CP2 and other fossil fuel export projects, and put us on a rapid and just trajectory off fossil fuels."
Opposition to CP2 may already be having some effect. Advocates had expected the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to consider the project this fall but so far, the agency hasn't. Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes said last week that "every month it is not on the agenda, we consider a victory because it means that it's not getting part of the federal approval that it needs."
While Venture Global lacks the permission required for CP2, the Biden administration has infuriated frontline communities, scientists, and voters concerned about the climate emergency by expanding LNG exports, enabling projects like Willow and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and continuing fossil fuel lease sales for public lands and waters.
Biden, who was elected in 2020 after running on bold climate promises, is now seeking reelection next year and could again face Republican former President Donald Trump, a major ally to the fossil fuel industry.
The president "must reject new fossil fuel projects, starting with CP2, that poison communities and that will harm young people far into the future," Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said Friday. "He can't one day cave to fossil fuel millionaires and the next throw a bone to young people. That's not how science works, and young voters know it."
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‘Five-Alarm Fire’ as Global Temps Breach 2°C Threshold
While scientists were quick to point out that this was just a daily anomaly, not a permanent shift, it is a "canary in the coalmine" that "underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions."
Nov 20, 2023
Global temperatures surpassed 2°C above preindustrial levels for the first time Friday, according to preliminary data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' ERA5 data set showed global surface air temperatures rising 2.07°C above the 1850-1900 average on Friday and 2.06°C above that average on Saturday, the service said.
"This is a five-alarm fire for humanity," the group Climate Defiance tweeted in response to the figures.
In the 2015 Paris agreement, world leaders set out to keep warming to "well-below" 2°C above preindustrial levels. Allowing warming to breach that point increases several climate risks, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): 2°C of warming compared with 1.5°C would raise sea levels by an additional 0.1 meters by 2100, destroy 99% of coral reefs instead of 70% to 90%, and expose several hundred million more people to poverty and climate-related hazards by 2050.
Friday's 2°C breach was first noted by Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess on social media Sunday. She said the day was also 1.17°C above the 1991-2020 average, making it the warmest November 17 on record.
Scientists were quick to point out that this doesn't mean global heating has breached the 2°C threshold long-term.
"The 1.5°C and 2°C warming thresholds have been defined in terms of the trend line," University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Manntweeted. "Not individual years, let alone months, weeks, or days (the shorter the time period, the larger the random fluctuations). Those who imply otherwise are misleading you."
Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the U.K., told CNN that it was "entirely expected that single days will surpass 2°C above preindustrial well before the actual 2°C target is breached over many years."
"We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas."
That said, the reading was a "canary in the coalmine" that "underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions," Allan said.
It also comes in a year of dropping canaries: The 12 months from November 2022 to October 2023 were the 12 hottest on record, according to a Climate Central analysis. 2023 saw the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer on record, the hottest month in July, and is likely to be the hottest year not just since record-keeping began, but in the last 125,000 years. And it's not just numbers. The record-breaking temperatures fueled deadly heatwaves, wildfires, and floods around the world.
"The indicators are flashing red," Climate Defiance wrote. "The planet's vital signs are clear. Humanity is on life support. With the El Niño cycle just beginning, this 2°C breach sadly represents not a climax but a small taste of what is to come."
"This is happening faster than expected," the group continued. "We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas. This is madness. Utter madness."
The 2°C breach comes a little less than two weeks from the start of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates. A recent report from U.N. Climate Change found that national plans were still incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C and that world leaders must take "bold strides forward" at the conference "to get on track." More than 650 scientists have signed a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to back a fossil-fuel phaseout at the talks.
"It's just one day (so far) above 2°C, but it highlights again that the world is approaching the limits set out by the Paris Agreement," IPCC scientist Ed Hawkins tweeted. "We already have many of the solutions to rapidly reduce emissions and halt the rise in global temperatures. We just need to choose to use them."
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Climate Crisis ‘Out of Control’ as Global Temperature Breaks Record for 3rd Time in 4 Days
Thursday's record came after the revelation that the seven-day stretch ending Wednesday was also the hottest week in at least 44 years.
Jul 07, 2023
For the third time in just four days, the Earth sweated through its unofficial hottest day on record Thursday.
The average global temperature reached 17.23°C, or 63°F, on July 6, up from the record set Monday, surpassed Tuesday, and matched Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer. Thursday's record came after the revelation that the seven-day stretch ending Wednesday was also the hottest week in at least 44 years.
" Climate change is out of control," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in response to Monday's and Tuesday's records, as The Associated Press reported. "If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation."
Scientists attribute the high temperatures to a combination of global heating caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and an El Niño event officially declared by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization Tuesday.
"Such records are the predictable consequence of a short-term El Niño temperature boost coming on top of the long-term global warming trend due to mankind's greenhouse gas emissions."
Earth's temperature reached 17.01°C, or 62.62°F, Monday and then 17.18°C, or 62.9°F, Tuesday, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). While these temperatures are the hottest since record-keeping began in 1979, The Washington Post explained, data from ice cores and tree rings indicate that they haven't been experienced on Earth since the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were around 18 feet higher. The week ending Wednesday was also 0.08°F, or 0.04°C, warmer than any in the record books, according to AP.
"Such records are the predictable consequence of a short-term El Niño temperature boost coming on top of the long-term global warming trend due to mankind's greenhouse gas emissions," lead Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde tweeted in response to Thursday's new record.
The University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer uses both temperature readings from the surface, air balloons, and satellites, along with NCEP forecast data, to provide daily average two-meter air temperatures, according to The Guardian.
The records it reports are considered "unofficial" by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) because they rely partly on computer models, AP explained, but the agency did not deny the impact of the climate emergency and El Niño on recent extremes.
"Although NOAA cannot validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis, we recognize that we are in a warm period due to climate change," NOAA said in a statement reported by AP.
There are also other indicators speaking to spiking temperatures: The European Union's Copernicus ECMWF ERA5 dataset put Monday's mean temperature at a record 16.88°C and Tuesday's at a new record temperature of 17.03°C.
June was also the warmest June on record, according to a report from the E.U.'s Copernicus Climate Change Service released Thursday, with temperatures more than 0.5°C above the 1991-2020 average. Sea surface temperatures also broke monthly records for both May and June, and Antarctic sea ice dwindled to 17% below average for a record low for June.
"We are in uncharted territory and we can expect more records to fall as El Niño develops further and these impacts will extend into 2024," Chris Hewitt, WMO Director of Climate Services, said in a statement responding to the report. "This is worrying news for the planet."
Scientists predict that the record breaking will continue into July, which is usually the warmest month of the year.
"Chances are that the month of July will be the warmest ever, and with it the hottest month ever," Karsten Haustein, a research fellow in atmospheric radiation at Leipzig University, told The Guardian, clarifying that "ever" meant in the last 120,000 years.
"I've never seen anything like it. I've been having heart palpitations because of the heat. I'm starting to think seriously that I'm going to leave Timbuktu."
The records aren't just numbers. They have been felt in extreme heatwaves around the globe from Texas to China. Cities in China are opening air raid shelters to help people hide from heat that has already turned deadly, AP reported Friday, and temperatures in Beijing surpassed 35°C for more than nine days in a row for the first time since 1961.
Temperatures were also high in Timbuktu, Mali.
"Usually, at night it's a bit cool even during the hot season. But this year, even at night, it's been hot—I've never seen anything like it," 50-year-old Fatoumata Arby told AP. "I've been having heart palpitations because of the heat. I'm starting to think seriously that I'm going to leave Timbuktu."
Beyond high temperatures, the impacts of the climate emergency continue to be felt in other ways. In an update Thursday, Canadian officials said the country's record-breaking wildfire season—which has sent toxic smoke pouring across the border in recent weeks—continues, with nearly 5,000 people forced from their homes and more than 8.8 million hectares of forest burned, CBC News reported. That's nearly 11 times the average hectares burned in the last decade.
"This number is literally off the charts," Michael Norton, director of the Northern Forestry Centre with the Canadian Forest Service at NRCan, said during a press conference reported by Politico, "with at least three more months left in the active wildfire season."
Officials say the climate emergency is playing a major role in the unprecedented season.
"This summer, we are witnessing the effects of climate change first-hand as Canada continues to experience more intense and frequent severe weather events," Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said in a briefing reported by CBC News.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, heavy monsoon rains have killed at least 50 people in two weeks, Al Jazeera reported Friday. The deluge comes a year after devastating flooding in Pakistan swallowed a third of the country and claimed more than 1,700 lives. Pakistan contributes less than 1% to global greenhouse gas emissions, but it is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, and scientists said that rising temperatures made last year's disaster more likely.
"Only when we bring carbon emissions to zero does the warming stop."
In response to news of broken records and weather extremes, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said people should not be paralyzed with fear.
"Rather than being 'terrified' by this expected consequence of human-caused warming, we should be motivated to act—in particular, holding politicians accountable at the ballot box," he tweeted. "Only when we bring carbon emissions to zero does the warming stop."
There's a chance that living through this summer of extremes could help with that motivation.
"The issue of climate change doesn't often get its 15 minutes of fame. When it does, it's usually tied to something abstract like a scientific report or a meeting of politicians that most people can't relate to," George Mason University climate communications professor Ed Maibach told AP.
"Feeling the heat—and breathing the wildfire smoke, as so many of us in the Eastern U.S. and Canada have been doing for the past month—is a tangible shared public experience that can be used to focus the public conversation," he said.
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In 'Stern Warning Sign,' Ocean and Air Temps Break May and June Records
Some scientists predict that 2023 could be the warmest year on record, as a developing El Niño exacerbates the impacts of the climate crisis.
Jun 16, 2023
Following a May of record ocean temperatures and a June of record air temperatures, scientists are warning that 2023 could be the hottest year on record.
For a brief period in June, average global air temperatures even topped 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, the temperature goal enshrined by the Paris climate agreement.
"The world has just experienced its warmest early June on record, following a month of May that was less than 0.1°C cooler than the warmest May on record," the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said in a statement. "Monitoring our climate is more important than ever to determine how often and for how long global temperatures are exceeding 1.5°C. Every single fraction of a degree matters to avoid even more severe consequences of the climate crisis."
Overall, global mean surface air temperatures for early June were higher than previous C3S data for the month "by a substantial margin," the service said. Between June 7 and 11, those temperatures were above 1.5°C, peaking at 1.69°C June 9, Agence France-Presse reported.
This is not the first time that averages have poked above the 1.5°C target for a limited time. In fact, ironically, the first time was around the negotiating of the Paris agreement in December 2015.
"As it happens, a strong El Niño was close to its peak at the time, and it is now estimated that for a few days the global mean temperature was more than 1.5°C higher than the preindustrial temperature for the month," C3S said. "This was probably the first time this had occurred in the industrial era."
"The global surface temperature anomaly is at or near record levels right now, and 2023 will almost certainly be the warmest year on record."
While there have been more incidents between 2015 and now, they were typically in the Northern Hemisphere winter and early spring. This is the first time averages have risen above 1.5°C in June.
The breach is a "stern warning sign that we are heading into very warm uncharted territory," Melissa Lazenby, a lecturer in climate change at Sussex University in the U.K., told Sky News.
It also comes amidst other concerning climate indicators. On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. announced that average ocean surface temperatures for May reached a record high for the second month in a row. May 2023 overall was the third warmest May on record, and sea ice in Antarctica dwindled to record low levels for the month.
NOAA's findings came a week after it declared that El Niño conditions had arrived, which could exacerbate the impacts of the climate crisis to raise temperatures and fuel more extreme weather events.
"The global surface temperature anomaly is at or near record levels right now, and 2023 will almost certainly be the warmest year on record," University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann told The Guardian. "That is likely to be true for just about every El Niño year in the future as well, as long as we continue to warm the planet with fossil fuel burning and carbon pollution."
Already this year, warm spring temperatures have had consequences, from unprecedented wildfires in Canada that smothered the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. in smoke to a fish die-off in the Gulf of Mexico.
"With climate change and global warming, it's been an interesting start to the season," NOAA climatologist Rocky Bilotta said during a press call reported by The New York Times.
University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain told ABC News that the high ocean temperatures were caused by a mixture of the climate crisis, the developing El Niño, the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption, and a reduction in shipping emissions that has removed cooling aerosols from the atmosphere.
If such warming persists, it could have serious consequences because warmer oceans fuel stronger tropical storms and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture that can worsen flooding events. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned in May that there was a 66% chance that El Niño would work with climate change to push at least one year's average temperature past 1.5°C above preindustrial levels between 2023 and 2027.
C3S noted that the 1.5°C and 2°C temperature targets were based on averages over 20 to 30 years. However, the service added, "as the global mean temperature continues to rise and more frequently exceed the 1.5°C limit, the cumulative effects of the exceedances will become increasingly serious."
Scientists and activists said these breaches, and other recent temperature anomalies and extreme weather events, should serve as a warning to policymakers to act quickly to phase out fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Without stronger emission cuts, the changes we are seeing are just the start of the adverse impacts we can expect to see," Cornell University atmospheric scientist Natalie Mahowald told The Guardian. "This year and the extreme events we have seen so far should serve as a warning."
Activist Bill McKibben meanwhile said the scariest element of recent weather news was that "the world isn't reacting rationally to it."
"The rapid warming over the next couple of years is likely to be our last opportunity to really act coherently as a civilization to reduce the magnitude of this crisis, and so far we are blowing it," he wrote Thursday.
Indeed, U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, which were intended to prepare the way for the COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates in November and December, ended Thursday with an impasse between the E.U. and climate vulnerable countries who want faster emissions cuts and a fossil fuel phaseout, and developing countries that want more climate finance from the Global North, as AFP explained.
"The gap between the Bonn political performance and the harsh climate reality feels already absurd," Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, told AFP. "Climate impacts stay no longer on paper. People are feeling and suffering from it now."
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned during a press conference Thursday that current national policies put the world on track for 2.8°C of warming by 2100.
"That spells catastrophe," Guterres said. "Yet the collective response remains pitiful."
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AI Study Warns World Could Hit 2°C Within Decades—Even With Emissions Cuts
"This new study, using a new method, adds to the evidence that we certainly will face continuing changes in climate that intensify the impacts we are already feeling," said the lead author.
Jan 31, 2023
Even with ambitious action to reduce planet-heating emissions, the world could pass the two key temperature thresholds of the Paris climate agreement in the coming decades, according to new research that relied on artificial intelligence.
With the 2015 deal, nations agreed to work toward keeping global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C and ultimately limiting it to 1.5°C. The study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a type of AI known as a neural network to predict how likely it is that the world will breach both limits before 2100.
Already, the world has warmed by an average of about 1.1°C relative to preindustrial levels. Stanford University's Noah Diffenbaugh and Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University found that under both low and high emissions scenarios, there is a high probability of hitting 1.5°C sometime in the 2030s. There's also a high chance of hitting 2°C in the next few decades.
"We have very clear evidence of the impact on different ecosystems from the 1°C of global warming that's already happened," Diffenbaugh told The Guardian. "This new study, using a new method, adds to the evidence that we certainly will face continuing changes in climate that intensify the impacts we are already feeling."
(Image: Dana Granoski/Stanford University)
"We confirm that the world is on the cusp of crossing the 1.5°C threshold," said Diffenbaugh. "Our AI model is quite convinced that there has already been enough warming that 2°C is likely to be exceeded if reaching net-zero emissions takes another half-century."
As CNN reported Monday:
The study's prediction is in line with previous models. In a major report published in 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that the world could cross the 1.5°C threshold "in the early 2030s."
Where the study departs from many current projections is in its estimates of when the world will cross the 2°C threshold.
While the IPCC projects that in a low emissions scenario, global temperature rises are unlikely to hit 2°C by the end of the century, the study returned more concerning results.
Diffenbaugh pointed out that various countries that support the Paris targets, along with nonstate actors, have set net-zero emissions targets for around mid-century. "Those net-zero pledges are often framed around achieving the Paris agreement 1.5°C goal," he said. "Our results suggest that those ambitious pledges might be needed to avoid 2°C."
For the study, Diffenbaugh and Barnes used outputs from global climate model simulations to train the neural network, then input previous observations of temperatures from across the globe to generate predictions. They tested the accuracy by seeing if the AI could correctly predict the current level of warming, or around 1.1°C—which it did.
"This was really the 'acid test' to see if the AI could predict the timing that we know has occurred," said Diffenbaugh. "We were pretty skeptical that this method would work until we saw that result. The fact that the AI has such high accuracy increases my confidence in its predictions of future warming."
According to The Associated Press:
Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn't part of the Diffenbaugh study but was part of the IPCC, said the study makes sense, fits with what scientists know, but seems a bit more pessimistic.
There's a lot of power in using AI and in the future that may be shown to produce better projections, but more evidence is needed before concluding that, Mahowald said.
University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, who edited the article, said that "the authors make an important and provocative contribution to the discussion over what is and is not achievable when it comes to limiting future warming below dangerous levels. That doesn't mean I necessarily agree with their conclusions."
Mann stressed the importance of distinguishing between physical and political obstacles to adequately slashing emissions, and that "physically, it is still possible to limit carbon emissions to levels that stay, with a reasonable likelihood, within the carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C."
"There is no climate 'cliff' at 1.5°C. Or 2°C," he added. "Rather, impacts increase with each fraction of a degree of warming. Limiting warming to 1.6°C is a whole lot better than allowing it to breach 2°C, and exceeding 1.5°C by a bit for a short period of time while stabilizing the climate below that level (a small 'overshoot') is a whole lot better than exceeding it by a lot for a long period of time (a big overshoot)."
The new AI-based research follows a study published last month which warned that even a temporary overshoot of the Paris targets could "significantly" raise the risk of triggering dangerous tipping points—specifically, the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest shifting to savannah, and the shutdown of the system of ocean currents that carries warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic.
Despite the world already enduring destructive impacts of heating the planet—from extreme weather to melting glaciers and sea ice to oceans becoming hotter and more acidic—the Paris agreement countries refused to agree to rapidly phase out climate-wrecking fossil fuels during the Egyptian-hosted COP27 summit in November.
The next global climate conference, scheduled for later this year, is hosted by the United Arab Emirates—which is currently facing intense criticism for appointing Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to lead COP28.
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Destructive Hurricanes Fuel Calls for Biden to Declare Climate Emergency
"Mother Nature is not waiting for the president or Congress to declare a climate emergency. She's showing us in real-time here in the United States—with wildfires, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and drought."
Sep 30, 2022
With Puerto Rico and Florida still reeling from a pair of hurricanes--one of which made landfall again Friday as a Category 1 storm in South Carolina--activists across the United States have renewed calls for President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
"President Biden, declare a climate emergency. If not now, when?"
"Is it time to declare a climate emergency yet?" NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus--among the outspoken experts demanding more action from the U.S. government--tweeted Thursday.
As Jean Su at the Center for Biological Diversity explained earlier this year, "Declaring a climate emergency isn't a catchphrase, it's a vital suite of actions to protect people and the planet from this crisis."
Su co-authored a February report for her group detailing some of the steps Biden could take to speed up the transition away from planet-wrecking fossil fuels if he issued an emergency declaration.
Campaigners have since ramped up pressure on the president, including with an Indigenous-led blockade outside the U.S. Department of Interior as well as delivering a 16-foot inflatable globe and nearly half a million petition signatures to the White House in August.
Progressive organizer Kai Newkirk on Thursday shared photos of the damage that Hurricane Ian caused in Florida and said: "President Biden, declare a climate emergency. If not now, when?"
Highlighting that the climate crisis disproportionately affects people of color and low-income communities, CPD Action stressed in a series of Ian-related tweets that "this disaster only illustrates the urgency for decisive change for our climate and our economic survival."
"There's no time to waste," the group added, urging Biden "to declare a climate emergency so he can use the powers of the executive branch to address this life-threatening crisis."
The youth-led Sunrise Movement on Friday also called for declaring "a full, national climate emergency."
As Ian barreled toward Florida's west coast this week, National Wildlife Federation executive vice president Mustafa Santiago Ali wrote for The Guardian that "the climate crisis is here and levying steep costs on communities. Black, Indigenous, and other frontline communities, including those in my home state of West Virginia, are experiencing these impacts--measured in lives lost, homes destroyed, and livelihoods upended--first and worst."
Along with noting Ian's path, Ali pointed to Hurricane Fiona's recent impacts on Puerto Rico--on top of still dealing with the fallout from Irma and Maria in 2017--and "the remnants of Typhoon Merbok, which destroyed homes and inundated western Alaska with historic levels of water" earlier this month.
"We need to help these communities and others rebuild stronger and more resilient to climate-fueled storms," he wrote, calling on policymakers in Washington, D.C. to build on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the bipartisan infrastructure law to cut planet-heating emissions.
"President Biden should step into the breach and declare a climate emergency," Ali asserted. "Mother Nature is not waiting for the president or Congress to declare a climate emergency. She's showing us in real-time here in the United States--with wildfires, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and drought."
Ali detailed the climate crisis-fighting powers Biden could unlock with an emergency declaration, which he argued would also "set the tone heading into the COP27 gathering in Egypt," the United Nations climate summit planned for November.
"My grandmother used to say if you know better, do better," he concluded. The president gets it when it comes to the threat climate change poses to Black people and other frontline communities. He now needs to show Congress, the states, and the world what doing better looks like in practice. Our lives depend on it."
Ali echoed his demand in a Friday tweet that featured video footage of Ian's destruction.
University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann and Susan Joy Hassol, director of the nonprofit Climate Communication, wrote about the recent storms in The Guardian on Friday.
"Fiona hit Puerto Rico as a powerful Category 4 storm, and hundreds of thousands of people there are still without power," they noted. "The storm barreled on into the open Atlantic, eventually making landfall in the maritime provinces to become Canada's strongest ever storm. Then came Ian, which feasted on a deep layer of very warm water in the Gulf of Mexico."
Pointing out that "Ian made landfall as one of the five most powerful hurricanes in recorded history to strike the U.S.," the experts emphasized that this storm is not "an anomaly or fluke," but rather "part of a larger pattern of stronger hurricanes, typhoons, and superstorms that have emerged as the oceans continue to set record levels of warmth."
"Many of the storms of the past five years--Harvey, Maria, Florence, Michael, Ida, and Ian--aren't natural disasters so much as human-made disasters, whose amplified ferocity is fueled by the continued burning of fossil fuels and the increase in heat-trapping carbon pollution, a planet-warming 'greenhouse gas,'' they added.
Mann and Hassol argued that while taking "steps to increase resilience and adapt to the changes that are inevitable" is important, "only mitigation--the dramatic reduction of heat-trapping pollution--can prevent things from getting worse."
"We've seen some progress on that front recently, both in the U.S. and globally," they continued, specifically mentioning the IRA while also warning that more must be done--a message they delivered just over a month before the November midterm election.
"We need more aggressive climate action to pass Congress. And that means we need politicians who are willing to support that action, rather than act as apologists for powerful fossil fuel interests," they wrote. "That's something for all Americans to think about as they go to the voting booths in a matter of weeks."
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Florida Told to Brace for Deadly Impact as Ian Expected to Become Category 4 Hurricane
The Tampa Bay area has long been a "sitting duck for catastrophic storm surge and has dodged several bullets," said one climate scientist. "Might not be so lucky this time."
Sep 27, 2022
Government officials and extreme weather experts on Tuesday warned Floridians to brace for impact from Ian, the first hurricane to threaten the Tampa Bay area in a century and the latest in what scientists say will be an era of more frequent and stronger storms due to the climate emergency.
"If you're good at prayer put Tampa on your list--the worst-case scenarios for Ian are haunting."
As Ian's eye passed over the northern coast of Cuba--where the Category 3 storm left around a million people without electricity--the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that "life-threatening storm surge looks increasingly likely along much of the [Florida] west coast where a storm surge warning is in effect, with the highest risk from Fort Myers to the Tampa Bay region. Listen to advice given by local officials and follow evacuation orders."
Hurricane and tropical storm warnings and watches were in effect throughout nearly all of Florida and as far north as South Carolina as Ian moved into the Gulf of Mexico, with local weather reports forecasting the storm will intensify into a Category 4--the second-strongest classification on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which is based on wind speed. Ian is expected to make landfall as a Category 4 storm somewhere between Tampa and Fort Meyers on Wednesday afternoon.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate action group 350.org, tweeted: "If you're good at prayer put Tampa on your list--the worst-case scenarios for Ian are haunting. Too much heat in the ocean!"
Climatologist Michael E. Mann is likewise "worried about [the] worst-case scenario with Ian."
"Tampa's long been [a] sitting duck for catastrophic storm surge and has dodged several bullets," he tweeted. "Might not be so lucky this time."
Predicted storm surges ranged from 2-4 feet in the Keys and north of the Anclote River along Florida's Gulf of Mexico coast to 8-12 feet in the Tampa Bay area. Additionally, NOAA warned people along the Atlantic coast from just south of Cape Canaveral to Long Bay in South Carolina to prepare for possible storm surges of 1-4 feet, depending on the area.
The last time the Tampa Bay area took a direct hit from a hurricane, the year was 1921 and the population was a little over 100,000. Today, more than three million people live in the nation's 18th-largest metropolitan area, raising fears regarding the readiness of a populace unaccustomed to hurricanes. Those concerns have been amplified amid reports that Hurricane Fiona caught communities from storm-seasoned Puerto Rico to Canada off guard in recent days.
Those at particular risk include elderly people--especially those with electric-powered medical devices--and the unhoused, whose population has surged along with area rent prices during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even if the area dodges yet another proverbial bullet and avoids the worst of Ian, rising sea levels caused by global heating mean local waters are projected to rise by as much as 2.5 feet by 2050 and by as much as eight feet by century's end, according to the Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel.
"Make no mistake," National Ocean Service Director Nicole LeBoeuf said in an interview with WUSF earlier this year, "sea level rise is upon us."
Beginning in January, the Tampa Bay Times published a series of articles on the region's warmer, wetter future. One of the articles warned that it won't take the "perfect storm" to wreak chaos throughout the area.
"What's going to be the Achilles' heel of Tampa, what is going to really surprise Tampa, is not a [Category] 5," National Hurricane Center storm surge specialist Jamie Rhome said, but rather "a big, sloppy Category 1 or 2."
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