What the Earth’s recent heat uptick could mean for the climate fight
And why one climate scientist still has reasons to hope.
Scientists monitoring Earth’s climate have identified a concerning trend in global warming starting in April 2023. While climate change has been steadily heating up the planet for decades, in 2023 global average temperatures suddenly jumped by about 0.2 degrees Celsius and have remained elevated.
The spike in temperature has raised alarm among climate scientists about how fast the climate crisis is progressing as they scramble to explain Earth’s worsening fever.
Jennifer Francis studies climate and weather in the Arctic at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and has had her eyes on the planet’s rising temperature for decades.
Read more on Inside Climate News.
Dr. Matti Goldberg, the Director of International Government Relations at Woodwell Climate, explains the stakes of COP29 from Baku, Azerbaijan.
It’s already official: You’re living through the hottest year on record
According to the European Union’s climate agency, 2024 is also the first year to breach a key climate threshold.
Nine months ago, the oceans became bathwater. As historically hot sea temperatures forced corals to expel the microorganisms that keep them alive, the world endured its fourth mass coral bleaching event, affecting more than half of all coral reefs in dozens of countries. As the temperatures continued to climb, many died.
It was an early taste of what would become a year marked by the consequences of record-breaking heat. And now it’s official: Last week, when much of the world’s attention was turned to the U.S. presidential election, scientists from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service crowned 2024 as the hottest year on record — and the first year to surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark. And that’s with two months left to go in the year.
Where has all the rain gone? Bone-dry October strikes much of US
A bone-dry October is pushing nearly half of the United States into a flash drought, leading to fires in the Midwest and hindering shipping on the Mississippi River.
More than 100 different long-term weather stations in 26 states, including Alaska, are having their driest October on record, through Sunday, according to records by the Southern Regional Climate Center and Midwest Regional Climate Center. Cities that have had no measurable rain for October include New York, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Sioux City, Iowa, along with normal dry spots such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, National Weather Service records show.
The Y-K Delta’s permafrost could be entirely gone within decades
All over Alaska, perennially frozen ground, or permafrost, is melting. During a panel discussion at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in April, an ecologist said the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is set to lose nearly all of its permafrost in the next two decades. And a warming climate is to blame.
“It’s bad news,” said Sue Natali, a Senior Scientist and leader of the Permafrost Pathways Initiative at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. The goal of the initiative is to help develop strategies to manage and adapt to the enormous impact permafrost thaw is having on Y-K Delta communities. “It’s worse if you don’t know, it’s worse if you don’t plan and it’s worse if you’re not part of the planning process,” she said.
Could a big hurricane whack New England? ‘More of a question of when than if.’
When Hurricane Helene blasted through western North Carolina in late September, devastating a region normally immune to severe damage from hurricanes, it woke up a wide swath of the country to a hard fact: We’re not as safe as we think.
That’s true in New England, too.
The nature of hurricanes has shifted as the planet warms due to climate change, with bigger, wetter, and stronger storms — something we’ve now seen happen twice in rapid succession, with Hurricane Milton following Helene.
Read more on The Boston Globe.
Nowhere in America is safe from climate-fueled storms and fires
Forecasters had warned for days that Hurricane Helene was likely to cause widespread devastation. But when the powerful storm struck Florida and barreled through the eastern US last week, killing more than 180 people and taking whole communities offline, it still managed to come as a shock.
Florida’s Big Bend, where Helene made landfall, previously went decades without a hurricane strike. In the past year or so, it has now seen three. The western half of North Carolina, once held up as a haven from the worst impacts of climate change, has been paralyzed by floods.
Destructive hurricanes like Helene highlight that catastrophic impacts from storms can extend far inland
Inland communities will increasingly need to prepare for impacts from storms.
Destructive hurricanes like Helene are a stark reminder that significant and devastating impacts from many major storms are not relegated to coastal cities and communities — inland regions often face catastrophic impacts too, experts are warning.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night before tracking north, leaving a wake of destruction over 400 miles in the days the followed.