Victory for Donald Trump in the US presidential election this year could put the world’s climate goals at risk, a former UN climate chief has warned.
The chances of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels are already slim, but Trump’s antipathy to climate action would have a major impact on the US, the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil and gas exporter, according to Patricia Espinosa, who served as the UN’s top official on the climate from 2016 to 2022.
“I worry [about the potential election of Trump] because it would have very strong consequences, if we see a regression regarding climate policies in the US,” Espinosa said. Although Trump’s policy plans are not clear, conversations with his circle have created a worrying picture that could include the cancellation of Joe Biden’s groundbreaking climate legislation, withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and a push for more drilling for oil and gas.
“We are not yet aligned to 1.5C. That’s the reality. So if we see a situation where we would see regression on those efforts, then [the likelihood of staying within 1.5C] is very limited. It would certainly be a much bigger risk,” said Espinosa.
“We could see a slowdown, an even bigger slowdown [in action to reduce emissions] which would unfortunately probably take us to an even more terrible scenario, unless we see strong leadership coming from other places, [such as] Europe.”
She said other countries must continue with climate action, even if the US were to renege on its goals under Trump, but the absence of the US would be a significant blow. “What happens in the US has a very big impact in so many places around the world.”
It is not all gloom, however. Espinosa was the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement, in 2016 when Trump was elected president. She said that if other countries put up a united front in favour of strong climate action, it could help to counteract the absence of the US. “When President Trump announced that they would withdraw from the Paris agreement, there was a certain fear that others would follow, and that there would be a setback in the pace of the climate change process. Not only did that not happen, but some countries that had not yet adhered to the Paris agreement did so,” she said.
If Trump took the US out of Paris in a fresh term, she did not believe others would follow suit: “As of now, I don’t see countries really going back. I think that the process will continue.”
On the contentious issue – particularly for the US – of climate finance, Espinosa said Biden was now facing difficulty in getting climate finance commitments through a hostile Republican Congress.
“We are seeing a lack of leadership, including in the big countries that can make contributions,” she said. “[In the US], I think there is a willingness, but there are also limitations. In the EU, there has been a long period where they have been discussing the internal frameworks [for climate finance]. At the same time, we have been seeing a reduction of funds going in general to the Global south, and very little is going to climate change. It’s really a question of giving it priority.”
She was also concerned that too much of the focus of climate finance and efforts to reduce emissions so far had been on shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to renewables. “We are now realising that nature will make or break net zero – decarbonising the energy sector will not be enough,” Espinosa said, calling for more emphasis on the role of nature, to halt deforestation and transform food production, which accounts for about a third of global emissions. “The 1.5C economy can only be achieved by ending deforestation and accelerating the transition to sustainable agriculture and food systems this decade.”
In 2024, most of the world’s population will go to the polls for important elections, in the US, Europe, Russia, India, the UK and scores of other countries. Climate action will be a contentious issue in many of these elections, as some parties are arguing for stronger policies based on stark scientific warnings, while others oppose such action.
Espinosa warned of the opposition to climate action that is being orchestrated around the world. “In the US, we see a very well organised and very strong campaign intending to reduce the perception of the critical nature of action that needs to be taken.”
To combat this, she called for businesses to play a greater role in pushing for a low-carbon economy. “We need to work closely with the private sector, make them aware of the important opportunities that the new [low-carbon] economy provides. There are profitable investments that protect nature and innovate technologies.”
A key area of the Atlantic Ocean where hurricanes form is already abnormally warm, much warmer than an ideal swimming pool temperature of about 80 degrees and on the cusp of feeling more like warm bathtub water.
These conditions were described by Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami, as “unprecedented,” “alarming” and an “out-of-bounds anomaly.” Combined with the rapidly subsiding El Niño weather pattern, it is leading to mounting confidence among forecasting experts that there will be an exceptionally high number of storms this hurricane season.
One such expert, Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University, said in his team’s annual forecast on Thursday that they expected a remarkably busy season of 23 named storms, including 11 hurricanes — five of them potentially reaching major status, meaning Category 3 or higher. In a typical season, there are 14 named storms with seven hurricanes and three of them major.
Dr. Klotzbach said there was a “well above-average probability” that at least one major hurricane would make landfall along the United States and in the Caribbean.
It’s the Colorado State researchers’ biggest April prediction ever, by a healthy margin, said Dr. Klotzbach. While things could still play out differently, he said he was more confident than he normally would be this early in the year. All the conditions that he and other researchers look at to forecast the season, such as weather patterns, sea surface temperatures and computer model data, are pointing in one direction.
“Normally, I wouldn’t go nearly this high,” he said, but with the data he’s seeing, “Why hedge?”
If anything, he said, his numbers are on the conservative side, and there are computer models that indicate even more storms on the way.
The United States was lucky in 2023.
Last year was unusual. Though only one hurricane, Idalia, made landfall in the United States, 20 storms formed, a number far above average and the fourth most since record keeping began.
Typically, the El Niño pattern that was in force would have suppressed hurricanes and reduced the number of storms in a season. But in 2023, the warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic blunted El Niño’s effect to thwart storms.
That left Idalia as the one impactful storm of the season in the Atlantic, with 12 deaths attributed to it and over $1 billion in damage. It hit in the big bend of Florida, where few people live, and the prevailing thought among hurricane researchers is that the East Coast got lucky, Dr. Klotzbach said.
That luck may change this year.
The El Niño pattern is dwindling now, and the likelihood of a La Niña pattern emerging during the hurricane season could also cause a shift in the steering pattern over the Atlantic. During an El Niño weather pattern, the area of high pressure over the Atlantic tends to weaken, which allows for storms to curve north and then east away from land. That’s what kept most of the storms last year away from land.
A La Niña weather pattern would already have forecasters looking toward an above-average year. The possibility of a La Niña, combined with record sea surface temperatures this hurricane season, could create a robust environment for storms to form and intensify this year.
Just because there are strong signals during an El Niño year that one thing will occur, it doesn’t mean the opposite happens during a La Niña year, Dr. Kirtman said. But if the high pressure strengthens and shifts west, it would mean more hurricanes making landfall.
The region where storms are most likely to form is often called the “tropical Atlantic,” stretching from West Africa to Central America and between Cuba and South America. During a La Niña year, Dr. Klotzbach said, there’s a slight increase in hurricanes forming in the western side of this main development zone — closer to the Caribbean than to Africa. When a storm forms there, it is more likely to make landfall because it’s closer to land.
And while it is difficult to predict specific landfalls this far ahead of the season, the sheer odds of more storms increases the expected risk to coastal areas.
Sea surface temperatures also affect the hurricane season. Over the past century, those temperatures have increased gradually. But last year, with an intensity that unnerved climate scientists, the warming ratcheted up more rapidly. And in the main area where hurricanes form, 2024 is already the warmest in a decade.
“Crazy” is how Dr. Kirtman described it. “The main development region is, right now, warmer than it’s historically been,” he said. “So it’s an out-of-bounds anomaly.”
There is little doubt in his mind that we are seeing some profound climate change impacts, but scientists don’t know exactly why it is occurring so quickly all of a sudden.
But it is happening, and it is likely to affect the season.
“The chances of a big, big hurricane that has a large impact making landfall is definitely increased,” he said.
Early forecasts aren’t always right.
It’s reasonable to take this forecast with a grain of sea salt; the seasonal forecast in April hasn’t always been the most accurate.
Colorado State University’s April forecast for the 2023 hurricane season called for a slightly below-average season with 13 named storms. Instead, there were 20. Even Dr. Klotzbach admits the April forecast isn’t always the best prediction, but its accuracy is improving.
The weather can be fickle, and much can change before the season officially begins on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will issue its own forecast in late May.
But for now, Colorado State and a few other forecasting groups have all called for one of the busiest seasons on record.
By year’s end, Dr. Klotzbach said, he’ll be writing a scientific paper on one of two things: the incredibly active hurricane season of 2024, or one of the biggest head fakes in Atlantic hurricane season history. But he’s pretty confident it will be the former. “If it turns out to be two hurricanes,” he said, “then I should just quit and do something else.”
Abstract
The use of cars in cities has many negative impacts, including pollution, noise and the use of space. Yet, detecting factors that reduce the use of cars is a serious challenge, particularly across different regions. Here, we model the use of various modes of transport in a city by aggregating Active mobility (A), Public Transport (B) and Cars (C), expressing the modal share of a city by its ABC triplet. Data for nearly 800 cities across 61 countries is used to model car use and its relationship with city size and income. Our findings suggest that with longer distances and the congestion experienced in large cities, Active mobility and journeys by Car are less frequent, but Public Transport is more prominent. Further, income is strongly related to the use of cars. Results show that a city with twice the income has 37% more journeys by Car. Yet, there are significant differences across regions. For cities in Asia, Public Transport contributes to a substantial share of their journeys. For cities in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, most of their mobility depends on Cars, regardless of city size. In Europe, there are vast heterogeneities in their modal share, from cities with mostly Active mobility (like Utrecht) to cities where Public Transport is crucial (like Paris or London) and cities where more than two out of three of their journeys are by Car (like Rome and Manchester).
Abstract
The impacts on marine species from secular warming and heatwaves are well demonstrated; however, the impacts of extreme cold events are poorly understood. Here we link the death of organisms from 81 species to an intense cold upwelling event in the Agulhas Current, and show trends of increasing frequency and intensification of upwelling in the Agulhas Current and East Australian Current. Using electronic tagging, we illustrate the potential impacts of upwelling events on the movement behaviour of bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas, including alterations of migratory patterns and maintenance of shallower dive profiles when transiting through upwelling cells. Increasing upwelling could result in ‘bait and switch’ situations, where climate change expands subtropical species’ distribution, while simultaneously exposing climate migrants to an increased risk of cold-mortality events at poleward distributional limits. This shows the potential impacts of increased cold events, an understudied aspect of climate change research, and highlights the complexities of climate change effects on marine ecosystems.
The Spanish-German cava giant Freixenet, known for its distinctive black glass bottles of sparkling wine, is to furlough 80% of its workers in Catalonia as the north-eastern Spanish region struggles with a drought that has lasted more than three years and severely affected grape production.
In a statement released this week, Freixenet said the temporary layoff – which will apply to as many as 615 of the 778 people it employs in Catalonia – would begin in May.
The effects of the climate emergency have become increasingly apparent across Spain over recent years, bringing deadly wildfires, affecting the production of traditional items such as olive oil and wine, and leading to the drying up of over-exploited wetlands in the south.
In May last year, the Spanish government approved an unprecedented €2.2bn (£1.9bn) plan to help farmers and consumers cope with the enduring drought. Among its provisions were €1.4bn of funds from the environment ministry to tackle the drought and increase the availability of water, and €784m from the agriculture ministry to help farmers maintain production and avoid food shortages.
The environment secretary, Teresa Ribera, said at the time: “Spain is a country that is used to periods of drought but there’s no doubt that, as a consequence of the climate change we’re experiencing, we’re seeing far more frequent and intense events and phenomena.”
Agriculture accounts for 79% of water use in Spain, residential use for 15%, industry for 5.8% and leisure 0.4%, according to figures from the environment ministry.
In Catalonia, which is now in its fourth successive year of drought, the regional government has declared a state of emergency and introduced a series of limits on water consumption that will affect 6 million people. The restrictions – which were triggered after reserves fell below 16% – include a limit of 200 litres per inhabitant per day, an end to beach showers, and a ban on public or private events that use water suitable for human consumption, such as temporary ice rinks, foam parties or water games.
Stipulations that had initially banned the filling of private and municipal freshwater swimming pools will be relaxed if the pool in question is judged to be in use as a public “climate shelter”.
Europe’s climate chief has warned against politicians trying to use the climate crisis as a wedge issue in the forthcoming EU parliament elections, calling instead for climate policy that will bring wider economic benefits.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU commissioner for climate action, said Europe had no choice but to press ahead with strong measures to cut greenhouse gases, whoever was in power, but added that more attention was needed to help businesses thrive in a low-carbon world.
Carbon dioxide, one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing to human-made climate change, keeps rising at an alarming rate. The latest Keeling Curve data taken at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in March 2024 says that the monthly average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now 4.7 parts per million (ppm) higher compared to a year ago, marking the largest increase ever recorded.
The "Keeling Curve" was conceived by scientist Charles David Keeling as a graphical representation of the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere. Data shown by the Keeling Curve is based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii, from 1958 to the present day.
According to Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and son of the original creator of the Keeling Curve, the 4.7 parts per million (ppm) annual rise is the largest increase in CO2 concentration ever recorded. We "continue to break records" in the CO2 rise rates, Keeling said, and the ultimate cause of this undeniable phenomenon is a continued increase in the world's fossil fuel consumption.
While carbon dioxide concentration keeps rising, the new record is partly attributed to the end of El Niño season. El Niño is a well-known global climate phenomenon caused by winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Temperature variations follow an irregular pattern, but they do have a somewhat cyclical occurrence.
CO2 concentrations are affected by El Niño events; the previous most rapid growth rate of the greenhouse gas happened in 2016 at the end of El Niño season. The rising CO2 levels caused by the natural phenomenon are now adding their own share of greenhouse effects to the CO2 growth caused by fossil fuel emissions.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in June last year that global concentration of CO2 rose to 421ppm, with a 50 percent increase compared to pre-industrial times. The updated Keeling Curve brings those CO2 levels to 426 ppm, the highest ever recorded in millions of years.
For the first 6,000 years of human civilization, CO2 levels were stable around 280 ppm. Modern human activities are contributing significantly higher greenhouse emissions by burning fossil fuels, which in turn cause a rise in catastrophic events such as floods, deadly heatwaves, droughts, wildfires.
Recent research suggests that when the atmosphere had the same CO2 levels we are now living in, which was around 14 million years ago, the world suffered civilization-threatening climate change consequences. After the latest El Niño spike, scientists now expect a return to a standard annual increase of 2-3 ppm for CO2 concentrations. Which isn't reassuring at all, Keeling said, as we still need to stabilize the climate system by reducing greenhouse emissions.
Latest CO2 increase marks largest rise ever in world's atmosphere
The law also stops programs designed to encourage renewable energy and conservation in a state that is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
The new law, which passed the Florida Legislature in March and takes effect on July 1, will also prohibit the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and will repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.
The legislation also deletes requirements that state agencies use climate-friendly products and purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.
The legislation, along with two other bills Mr. DeSantis signed on Wednesday, “will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” the governor wrote on the social media platform X. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”
Florida is one of the states most vulnerable to the costly and deadly impacts of climate change, which is largely driven by the burning of oil, gas and coal. Multiple scientific studies have shown that the increase of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has contributed to sea level rise and more flooding in the state’s coastal cities.
Last year was the hottest in Florida since 1895, and the waters off its coast heated to 90 degrees during the summer, bleaching corals and scorching marine life. Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Aug. 30 near Keaton Beach and caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damages. The year before, Hurricane Ian was blamed for more than 140 deaths and $109.5 billion in damages in Florida, becoming the costliest hurricane in state history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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The Netherlands’ new right-wing coalition government aims to reintroduce daytime speeds of 80mph on motorways as part of a number of proposed changes to the country’s environmental policies which have sparked concern.
The move echoes the anti-green stance of other right-wing parties across the continent, as environmental issues become popular bogeymen for populist politicians. In Germany, for example, heat pumps have been politicised, as members of the far-right party AfD have called the Green party “our enemies’.
A 26-page coalition accord titled “hope, guts and pride” outlined measures aiming to reduce migration, introduce constitutional reform, address a housing and cost-of-living crisis and row back on climate change and pollution policy.
Under previous governments, the Netherlands was seen as one of the forerunners of Europe in adopting renewable energy sources – especially in solar power – and planning to drastically reduce animal farming to address its manure-based pollution problem. But, although the small, low-lying country would be partially submerged without action on rising sea levels and river flood risk, there is little in the accord on climate change.
[...]
Daytime motorway speeds, which had been reduced to 62mph to reduce nitrogen compound pollution, will return to 80mph (130km an hour) “where possible”, subsidised “red diesel” will be reintroduced for farmers from 2027, certain manure pollution measures will be scrapped and the coalition pledges not to enforce compulsory animal farm closures.
Targets for heat pumps introduction will be abandoned, and four nuclear plants will be built.
[...]
Left-wing leaders and climate activists were immediately sceptical, pointing out that the coalition also has no majority in the Senate. Frans Timmermans, the leader of the Green Left-Labour alliance – second-largest party in parliament – and former head of Europe’s Green Deal, told Dutch media the EU would never agree to Dutch exemptions: “They say …‘We’ll go to Brussels because we don’t want to keep to the rules about nitrogen.’ Brussels will see you coming. You always ask other member states to stick to the rules but you don’t want to do that yourself. Honestly, it is not going to happen.”
Marjan Minnesma, the director of Urgenda, which won a legal battle to make the Dutch state reduce carbon emissions, said the accord risked a stream of court cases. “Previous ministers have tried to do all they can by derogation [provisions within EU law] for agriculture and nitrogen-based emissions … and it’s easy to say you will just stop, but an awful lot is built on EU law,” she told NPO Radio1. “But we are also dependent on the EU because the same farmers export most of their products. This is largely gesture politics.”
The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.
A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.
A 3C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100” the paper states. This economic loss is so severe that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”, it adds.
This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought. We exploit natural variability in global temperature and rely on time-series variation. A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world GDP. Global temperature shocks correlate much more strongly with extreme climatic events than the country-level temperature shocks commonly used in the panel literature, explaining why our estimate is substantially larger. We use our reduced-form evidence to estimate structural damage functions in a standard neoclassical growth model. Our results imply a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,056 per ton of carbon dioxide. A business-as-usual warming scenario leads to a present value welfare loss of 31%. Both are multiple orders of magnitude above previous estimates and imply that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.
Abstract
In 2023, Antarctic sea-ice extent (SIE) reached record lows, with winter SIE falling to 2.5Mkm2 below the satellite era average. With this multi-model study, we investigate the occurrence of anomalies of this magnitude in latest-generation global climate models. When these anomalies occur, SIE takes decades to recover: this indicates that SIE may transition to a new, lower, state over the next few decades. Under internal variability alone, models are extremely unlikely to simulate these anomalies, with return period >1000 years for most models. The only models with return period <1000 years for these anomalies have likely unrealistically large interannual variability. Based on extreme value theory, the return period is reduced from 2650 years under internal variability to 580 years under a strong climate change forcing scenario.
Key Points
•The latest generation of global climate models rarely simulate an Antarctic sea-ice extent anomaly as negative as observed in winter 2023
• The return period for such an anomaly is 2650 years under internal variability, decreasing to 580 years under strong climate change forcing
• After the anomaly occurs, sea-ice extent recovers within a decade to a new, lower state
Plain Language Summary
In 2023, the area of winter Antarctic sea ice fell to the lowest measured since satellite records began in late 1978. It is still under debate how far this low can be explained by natural variations, and how much can be explained by climate change. Global climate models are tools used to study past and predict future global change. We show that, without climate change, the latest generation of these models are extremely unlikely to simulate a sea-ice reduction from the mean as large as observed in winter 2023. Including strong climate change quadruples the chance of such a reduction, but the chance is still very low. When these rare reductions are simulated, sea ice takes around 10 years to recover to a new, lower, area: this indicates that Antarctic sea ice may transition to a new, lower, state over the next few decades.
