The World Meteorological Organization has released its latest climate predictions report, and the news is not great

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released its climate predictions report for the next five years; frankly, the news is dire.

The WMO issues its Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update each year. The report aims to inform policy-makers by providing climate predictions for the upcoming years, in this case, 2023 to 2027.

“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5 °C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to the long-term warming over many years,” said Petteri Taalas, the WMO’s Secretary-General. “However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5 °C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency.”

The WMO’s warning accompanies its prediction that there’s a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will exceed the warmest on record. El Niño and climate change will likely drive this temperature spike.

“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” said Taalas. “This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared.”

An El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become substantially warmer than average, causing a shift in atmospheric circulation. More heat in the atmosphere and warmer ocean surface temperatures can lead to increased wind speeds in tropical storms and strongly affect marine life off the Pacific coast.

In addition, the WMO has predicted that Arctic heating is likely to be three times higher than the global average. This is of concern to experts.

“For most of Earth’s history, the planet has been without polar ice caps,” said Chris Mays, a lecturer in paleontology at University College Cork, Ireland. “But the transitions from an icy world (like today) an ice-free world is usually much slower. We’re heading towards an ice-free globe, but the rate at which things are changing is reminiscent of the most extreme and most devastating warming events in Earth’s past.”

In terms of rainfall, the WMO’s predictions suggest that there will be increased rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, with reduced rainfall expected over the Amazon and parts of Australia.

In 2015, our chance of exceeding 1.5 °C was zero; it has increased steadily since then. Between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance we’d exceed the level set by the Paris Agreement. According to the WMO’s latest predictions, the chance of global near-surface temperature exceeding 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels for at least one year between now and 2027 is 66% or more likely than not.

The WMO’s predictions have, understandably, created concern amongst experts.

“Projections for the warmest year on record in the next five years spells further trouble for the health of people around the world,” said Belle Workman, a research fellow at Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne. “We know that climate change negatively impacts health in a variety of ways, including through the direct physical effects of heatwaves, such as heat stroke, and indirect effects of rising temperatures, such as contributing to food and water insecurity.”

Some have stressed the reliability of the science underlying these predictions.

“The data used to cover the entire globe using a combination of surface and satellite-based measurements, and are thoroughly quality controlled by meteorological agencies and scientific researchers around the world,” said Janette Lindesay from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. “Climate system modeling by 11 different institutions has been used to produce forecasts for the period 2023 to 2027, providing a high degree of confidence in the projections because they are replicated across different research groups.”

The WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update is available here as a PDF.

Source: World Meteorological Organization via Scimex

https://newatlas.com/environment/wmo-predicts-hottest-year-on-record-within-5-years/

cheers, permeate

transition said:

cheers, permeate

Drinking to that, are ye?

Ah well we’ve still got 4 years then

dv said:

Ah well we’ve still got 4 years then

They didn’t say which year within the five and they didn’t say wheter the other four were not hot.

roughbarked said:

dv said:

Ah well we’ve still got 4 years then

They didn’t say which year within the five and they didn’t say wheter the other four were not hot.

I think they said they were all very likely to set new high temperature records.

PermeateFree said:

roughbarked said:

dv said:

Ah well we’ve still got 4 years then

They didn’t say which year within the five and they didn’t say wheter the other four were not hot.

I think they said they were all very likely to set new high temperature records.

Ooh, goody. More cyclones.

PermeateFree said:

roughbarked said:

dv said:

Ah well we’ve still got 4 years then

They didn’t say which year within the five and they didn’t say wheter the other four were not hot.

I think they said they were all very likely to set new high temperature records.

Well, yes. They have been warming more each year for a while now.

roughbarked said:

PermeateFree said:

roughbarked said:

They didn’t say which year within the five and they didn’t say wheter the other four were not hot.

I think they said they were all very likely to set new high temperature records.

Well, yes. They have been warming more each year for a while now.

I wonder which year will win

Imagine if people had painted their roofs white years ago.

wookiemeister said:

Imagine if people had painted their roofs white years ago.

On reflection I haven’t imagined that at all.

Hottest period on record is still frikkin freezing.

47 degrees Fahrenheit IIRC.

“The sea water actually goes much farther beneath the grounded ice —kilometers, not hundreds of meters,” senior author Eric Rignot, an Earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and a NASA research scientist, tells the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein. “And that water is full of heat and able to melt the glaciers vigorously. And it’s kind of the most sensitive part of the glacier.”

In the study, glaciologists used satellite data to track the Petermann Glacier’s measurements and changes over several years. By documenting the ice’s height and how the glacier responds to tides, the team predicted what was happening at the difficult-to-observe grounding line. They discovered the massive cavity beneath the glacier, where melting has accelerated—in the last three years, the rate of melt was 50 percent higher than it was from 2016 to 2019.

If that rapid pace of melting is happening elsewhere in Greenland and along the Antarctic ice sheet, that means global predictions for sea-level rise so far have captured just the tip of the iceberg.

“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” says Rignot in a statement. “These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea-level rise by up to 200 percent—not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica.”

Extract from:

Satellites Show Warming Tides Melting a Massive Greenland Glacier

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/satellites-show-warming-tides-melting-a-massive-greenland-glacier-180982157

Carbon dioxide in atmosphere hits new record high as scientists call for ‘every effort to slash carbon pollution’

Observations have been taken at the Mauna Loa since 1958.

Scientists say we need to make “every effort” to combat dangerous climate change as the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hits a record high.

Measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory on Hawaii’s Big Island averaged 424 parts per million (ppm) in May 2023, up 3 ppm on last year’s May average, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data.

Atmospheric CO2 peaks in the Northern Hemisphere in May, and so that month is used as a benchmark.

The new record builds on last year’s all time high, pushing total atmospheric CO2 concentration to 50 per cent above pre-industrial levels.

NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were “a direct result of human activity”.

“Every year, we see the impacts of climate change in the heat waves, droughts, flooding, wildfires and storms happening all around us,” Dr Spinrad said in an NOAA statement.

“While we will have to adapt to the climate impacts we cannot avoid, we must expend every effort to slash carbon pollution and safeguard this planet and the life that calls it home.”

The observatory on Mauna Loa has measured atmospheric CO2 since 1958, when the level was less than 320 ppm.

The ‘Keeling Curve’ continues to trend upwards as atmospheric CO2 rises at Mauna Loa.

The upward trend is known as the Keeling Curve, which is a graph that shows the seasonal and annual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and was named after David Keeling, who started the measurements.

The Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego, which keeps its own independent records of CO2, measured a May 2023 average of 423.78 ppm, which is also 3 ppm above its own records from May last year.

The Scripps program is now run by David Keeling’s son, geochemist Ralph Keeling.

“What we’d like to see is the curve plateauing and even falling because carbon dioxide as high as 420 or 425 parts per million is not good,” Professor Keeling said.

“It shows that as much as we’ve done to mitigate and reduce emissions, we still have a long way to go.”

Mark Howden, a climate scientist and IPCC contributing author at the Australian National University, said the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere was not a surprise, and could be masked by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

El Niño can cause atmospheric CO2 to spike as less carbon is stored via photosynthesis and more is lost through decomposition.

High rainfall during La Niña increases growth which leads to more carbon sequestration in vegetation, as well as bushfire suppression.

But if we move into El Niño, that sequestration is likely to be undone.

“ El Niño means that probably next year our CO2 will go up by more than 3 parts per million,” said Professor Howden, who wasn’t involved in the Mauna Loa observations.

“That’s because El Niño tends to dry out continents like Australia, which means you actually lose more carbon through decomposition than you gain through plant growth.”

Signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement committed to keeping warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5C.

Above 1.5C, the impacts from climate change will become much more severe.

Annual emissions during peak COVID shutdowns dipped by around 6 per cent. That’s how much we need to be cutting emissions each year to limit warming to 1.5C, Professor Howden said.

“That means we would have to do that 6 per cent reduction in the COVID year, followed by another 6 per cent, and another 6 per cent … and clearly we haven’t done that.

“If we actually look at greenhouse gas emissions, we had a dip during the main COVID year that was largely due to reductions in transport, and that bounced back immediately afterwards.”

Because CO2 persists in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, Professor Howden said readings at Mauna Loa would continue to go up even after our rate of emissions plateaus and begins to decline.

“Even if we level off our greenhouse gas emissions, that would still result in accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” he said.

“That’s because, roughly speaking, half of every tonne of carbon dioxide we emit sits in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years.

“The only way to stop that is to take it down to zero, at which stage we’ll actually start to stabilise CO2.”

Professor Howden said the message hasn’t changed, but we’re losing time to act on it.

“The clear message from the IPCC is the only only trajectory that’s consistent with the Paris Agreement goals is very rapid and very large and very sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-06-06/science-atmospheric-co2-hits-record-high/102444412

Global climate records tumble at rapid rate as 2023 could become the warmest year on record

The global average air temperature has spiked in June to new record levels.

Satellite data since 1981 reveals 2023 is seeing an extended run of record-warm ocean temperatures

The water temperature in the North Atlantic is surging well above all previous years in the satellite era.

Sea-ice surrounding Antarctica in 2023 is running at levels well below previous records.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-16/global-climate-records-breaking-rapid-rate/102484434

PermeateFree said:

Global climate records tumble at rapid rate as 2023 could become the warmest year on record

The global average air temperature has spiked in June to new record levels.

Satellite data since 1981 reveals 2023 is seeing an extended run of record-warm ocean temperatures

The water temperature in the North Atlantic is surging well above all previous years in the satellite era.

Sea-ice surrounding Antarctica in 2023 is running at levels well below previous records.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-16/global-climate-records-breaking-rapid-rate/102484434

Going from bad to worse.

Catastrophic climate ‘doom loops’ could start in just 15 years, new study warns

Climate “tipping points,” such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, could come within a human lifetime, scientists have said.

Earth’s ecosystems may be careering toward collapse much sooner than scientists thought, a new study of our planet’s warming climate has warned.

According to the research, more than a fifth of the world’s potentially catastrophic tipping points — such as the melting of the Arctic permafrost, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the sudden transformation of the Amazon rainforest into savanna — could occur as soon as 2038.

In climatology, a “tipping point” is the threshold beyond which a localized climate system, or “tipping element,” irreversibly changes. For instance, if the Greenland ice sheet were to collapse, it would also reduce snowfall in the northern part of the island, making large parts of the sheet irretrievable.

Yet the science behind these dramatic transformations is poorly understood and often based on oversimplified models. Now, a new attempt to understand their inner workings, published June 22 in the journal Nature, has revealed that they may happen much sooner than we thought.

“Over a fifth of ecosystems worldwide are in danger of collapsing,” co-author Simon Willcock, a professor of sustainability at Bangor University in the U.K., said in a statement. “However, ongoing stresses and extreme events interact to accelerate rapid changes that may well be out of our control. Once these reach a tipping point, it’s too late.”

Unlike the well-established link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, the study of tipping points is a young and contentious science.

To understand how rising temperatures and other environmental stressors could cause complex ecosystems to break down, scientists use computer models to simplify ecosystems’ dynamics, enabling them to predict the fate of those ecosystems — and when their tipping points could be reached.

But if these simulations miss an important element or interaction, their forecasts can land decades off the mark. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations’ most important body for evaluating climate science) said in its most recent report that the Amazon rainforest could reach a tipping point that will transform it into a savannah by 2100.

The researchers behind the new study say this prediction is too optimistic.

According to the researchers, most tipping-point studies build the math in their models to focus on one predominant driver of collapse, for example deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. However, ecosystems aren’t contending with just one problem but rather a swarm of destabilizing factors that compound one another. For example, the Amazon also faces rising temperatures, soil degradation, water pollution and water stress.

To investigate how these elements interact and whether these interactions can, in fact, hasten a system’s demise, the scientists behind the new study built computer models of two lake and two forest ecosystems (including one which modeled the collapse of civilization on Easter Island) and ran them more than 70,000 times while adjusting the variables throughout.

After testing their systems across multiple modes — with just one cause of collapse acting, with multiple causes acting and with all of the causes plus the introduction of random noise to mimic fluctuations in climate variables — the scientists made some troubling findings: multiple causes of collapse acting together brought the abrupt transformation of some systems up to 80% closer to the present day.

And even when the main cause of collapse was not allowed to increase with time, 15% of the collapses occurred purely because of the new elements.

“Our main finding from four ecological models was that ecosystems could collapse 30-80% earlier depending on the nature of additional stress,” co-author John Dearing, a professor of physical geography at Southampton University in the U.K. told Live Science in an email. “So if previous tipping points were forecast for 2100 (i.e. 77 years from now) we are suggesting these could happen 23 to 62 years earlier depending on the nature of the stresses.”

This means that significant social and economic costs from climate change might come much sooner than expected, leaving governments with even less time to react than first thought.

“This has potentially profound implications for our perception of future ecological risks,” co-author Gregory Cooper, a climate systems researcher at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., said in the statement. “While it is not currently possible to predict how climate-induced tipping points and the effects of local human actions on ecosystems will connect, our findings show the potential for each to reinforce the other. Any increasing pressure on ecosystems will be exceedingly detrimental and could have dangerous consequences.”

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-climate-doom-loops-could-start-in-just-15-years-new-study-warns

PermeateFree said:

Catastrophic climate ‘doom loops’ could start in just 15 years, new study warns

Climate “tipping points,” such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, could come within a human lifetime, scientists have said.

Earth’s ecosystems may be careering toward collapse much sooner than scientists thought, a new study of our planet’s warming climate has warned.

According to the research, more than a fifth of the world’s potentially catastrophic tipping points — such as the melting of the Arctic permafrost, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the sudden transformation of the Amazon rainforest into savanna — could occur as soon as 2038.

In climatology, a “tipping point” is the threshold beyond which a localized climate system, or “tipping element,” irreversibly changes. For instance, if the Greenland ice sheet were to collapse, it would also reduce snowfall in the northern part of the island, making large parts of the sheet irretrievable.

Yet the science behind these dramatic transformations is poorly understood and often based on oversimplified models. Now, a new attempt to understand their inner workings, published June 22 in the journal Nature, has revealed that they may happen much sooner than we thought.

“Over a fifth of ecosystems worldwide are in danger of collapsing,” co-author Simon Willcock, a professor of sustainability at Bangor University in the U.K., said in a statement. “However, ongoing stresses and extreme events interact to accelerate rapid changes that may well be out of our control. Once these reach a tipping point, it’s too late.”

Unlike the well-established link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, the study of tipping points is a young and contentious science.

To understand how rising temperatures and other environmental stressors could cause complex ecosystems to break down, scientists use computer models to simplify ecosystems’ dynamics, enabling them to predict the fate of those ecosystems — and when their tipping points could be reached.

But if these simulations miss an important element or interaction, their forecasts can land decades off the mark. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations’ most important body for evaluating climate science) said in its most recent report that the Amazon rainforest could reach a tipping point that will transform it into a savannah by 2100.

The researchers behind the new study say this prediction is too optimistic.

According to the researchers, most tipping-point studies build the math in their models to focus on one predominant driver of collapse, for example deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. However, ecosystems aren’t contending with just one problem but rather a swarm of destabilizing factors that compound one another. For example, the Amazon also faces rising temperatures, soil degradation, water pollution and water stress.

To investigate how these elements interact and whether these interactions can, in fact, hasten a system’s demise, the scientists behind the new study built computer models of two lake and two forest ecosystems (including one which modeled the collapse of civilization on Easter Island) and ran them more than 70,000 times while adjusting the variables throughout.

After testing their systems across multiple modes — with just one cause of collapse acting, with multiple causes acting and with all of the causes plus the introduction of random noise to mimic fluctuations in climate variables — the scientists made some troubling findings: multiple causes of collapse acting together brought the abrupt transformation of some systems up to 80% closer to the present day.

And even when the main cause of collapse was not allowed to increase with time, 15% of the collapses occurred purely because of the new elements.

“Our main finding from four ecological models was that ecosystems could collapse 30-80% earlier depending on the nature of additional stress,” co-author John Dearing, a professor of physical geography at Southampton University in the U.K. told Live Science in an email. “So if previous tipping points were forecast for 2100 (i.e. 77 years from now) we are suggesting these could happen 23 to 62 years earlier depending on the nature of the stresses.”

This means that significant social and economic costs from climate change might come much sooner than expected, leaving governments with even less time to react than first thought.

“This has potentially profound implications for our perception of future ecological risks,” co-author Gregory Cooper, a climate systems researcher at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., said in the statement. “While it is not currently possible to predict how climate-induced tipping points and the effects of local human actions on ecosystems will connect, our findings show the potential for each to reinforce the other. Any increasing pressure on ecosystems will be exceedingly detrimental and could have dangerous consequences.”

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-climate-doom-loops-could-start-in-just-15-years-new-study-warns

Thing is, we have never really had the time to waste on avoiding this. Yet avoid it, is what we have wasted our time on.

roughbarked said:

PermeateFree said:

Catastrophic climate ‘doom loops’ could start in just 15 years, new study warns

Climate “tipping points,” such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, could come within a human lifetime, scientists have said.

Earth’s ecosystems may be careering toward collapse much sooner than scientists thought, a new study of our planet’s warming climate has warned.

According to the research, more than a fifth of the world’s potentially catastrophic tipping points — such as the melting of the Arctic permafrost, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the sudden transformation of the Amazon rainforest into savanna — could occur as soon as 2038.

In climatology, a “tipping point” is the threshold beyond which a localized climate system, or “tipping element,” irreversibly changes. For instance, if the Greenland ice sheet were to collapse, it would also reduce snowfall in the northern part of the island, making large parts of the sheet irretrievable.

Yet the science behind these dramatic transformations is poorly understood and often based on oversimplified models. Now, a new attempt to understand their inner workings, published June 22 in the journal Nature, has revealed that they may happen much sooner than we thought.

“Over a fifth of ecosystems worldwide are in danger of collapsing,” co-author Simon Willcock, a professor of sustainability at Bangor University in the U.K., said in a statement. “However, ongoing stresses and extreme events interact to accelerate rapid changes that may well be out of our control. Once these reach a tipping point, it’s too late.”

Unlike the well-established link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, the study of tipping points is a young and contentious science.

To understand how rising temperatures and other environmental stressors could cause complex ecosystems to break down, scientists use computer models to simplify ecosystems’ dynamics, enabling them to predict the fate of those ecosystems — and when their tipping points could be reached.

But if these simulations miss an important element or interaction, their forecasts can land decades off the mark. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations’ most important body for evaluating climate science) said in its most recent report that the Amazon rainforest could reach a tipping point that will transform it into a savannah by 2100.

The researchers behind the new study say this prediction is too optimistic.

According to the researchers, most tipping-point studies build the math in their models to focus on one predominant driver of collapse, for example deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. However, ecosystems aren’t contending with just one problem but rather a swarm of destabilizing factors that compound one another. For example, the Amazon also faces rising temperatures, soil degradation, water pollution and water stress.

To investigate how these elements interact and whether these interactions can, in fact, hasten a system’s demise, the scientists behind the new study built computer models of two lake and two forest ecosystems (including one which modeled the collapse of civilization on Easter Island) and ran them more than 70,000 times while adjusting the variables throughout.

After testing their systems across multiple modes — with just one cause of collapse acting, with multiple causes acting and with all of the causes plus the introduction of random noise to mimic fluctuations in climate variables — the scientists made some troubling findings: multiple causes of collapse acting together brought the abrupt transformation of some systems up to 80% closer to the present day.

And even when the main cause of collapse was not allowed to increase with time, 15% of the collapses occurred purely because of the new elements.

“Our main finding from four ecological models was that ecosystems could collapse 30-80% earlier depending on the nature of additional stress,” co-author John Dearing, a professor of physical geography at Southampton University in the U.K. told Live Science in an email. “So if previous tipping points were forecast for 2100 (i.e. 77 years from now) we are suggesting these could happen 23 to 62 years earlier depending on the nature of the stresses.”

This means that significant social and economic costs from climate change might come much sooner than expected, leaving governments with even less time to react than first thought.

“This has potentially profound implications for our perception of future ecological risks,” co-author Gregory Cooper, a climate systems researcher at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., said in the statement. “While it is not currently possible to predict how climate-induced tipping points and the effects of local human actions on ecosystems will connect, our findings show the potential for each to reinforce the other. Any increasing pressure on ecosystems will be exceedingly detrimental and could have dangerous consequences.”

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-climate-doom-loops-could-start-in-just-15-years-new-study-warns

Thing is, we have never really had the time to waste on avoiding this. Yet avoid it, is what we have wasted our time on.

We have to start taking this thing really, really seriously and it will need big changes to the way we live. Currently we view this as something that may happen to affect our lives and anyway, something will turn up to fix it, but in the meantime we can turn-up the air-conditioner.

The world just had its hottest day on record, initial data shows — and experts say it’s only going to get hotter
By the Specialist Reporting Team’s Evan Young
Scientists warned us it was close — and now we have data suggesting July 3, 2023 broke the record for the hottest day ever globally.
25m ago

roughbarked said:

The world just had its hottest day on record, initial data shows — and experts say it’s only going to get hotter
By the Specialist Reporting Team’s Evan Young
Scientists warned us it was close — and now we have data suggesting July 3, 2023 broke the record for the hottest day ever globally.
25m ago

Shit eh

And at 62.62°F (17.01°C) considerably higher than the nonsense figure moll inserted earlier…

dv said:

roughbarked said:

The world just had its hottest day on record, initial data shows — and experts say it’s only going to get hotter
By the Specialist Reporting Team’s Evan Young
Scientists warned us it was close — and now we have data suggesting July 3, 2023 broke the record for the hottest day ever globally.
25m ago

Shit eh

no eh about it mate. Shit is about all we have got left to do.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-07/climate-records-are-falling-el-nino-la-nina/102571518

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Not good.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-06/unofficial-global-average-temperature-record-reached-again/102572202

LOL

For those of you who are interested in statistics, this is a five-sigma event. So it’s five standard deviations beyond the mean. Which means that if nothing had changed, we’d expect to see a winter like this about once every 7.5 billion years.