Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Press Summary (First Published 2024/06/07)

• Floods similar to the June 2024 Southern Germany floods are up 2 mm/day (up to 10%) wetter in the present than they have been in the past.

• This was a somewhat uncommon event.

• We mostly ascribe the heavy precipitation associated with the Southern Germany floods to human driven climate change and natural climate variability likely played a modest role.

One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found.

"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever."

The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May — an increase of 2.9 ppm since May 2023 and the fifth-largest annual growth in 50 years of data recording.

It also made official that the past two years saw the largest jump in the May peak — when CO2 levels are at their highest in the Northern Hemisphere. John Miller, a NOAA carbon cycle scientist, said that the jump likely stems from the continuous rampant burning of fossil fuels as well as El Niño conditions making the planet's ability to absorb CO2 more difficult.

This graph shows the full record of monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. The carbon dioxide data on Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere. NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

The surge of carbon dioxide levels at the measuring station surpassed even the global average set last year, which was a record high of 419.3 ppm — 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. However, NOAA noted that their observations were taken at the observatory specifically, and do not "capture the changes of CO2 across the globe," although global measurements have proven consistent without those at Mauna Loa.

CO2 measurements "sending ominous signs"

In its news release, NOAA said the measurements are "sending ominous signs."

"Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill."

Carbon dioxide "acts like a blanket in the atmosphere," NOAA explained — much like other greenhouse gases that amplify the sun's heat toward Earth's surface. And while carbon dioxide is essential in keeping global temperatures above freezing, having such high concentrations shoots temperatures beyond levels of comfort and safety.

That warming is fueling extreme weather events, and the consequences are aleady being felt, with deadly floods, heat waves and droughts devastating communities worldwide and agriculture seeing difficult shifts.

The news from NOAA comes a day after the European Union's climate change service, Copernicus, announced that Earth has now hit 12 straight months of record-high temperatures, a trend with "no sign in sight of a change."

"We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said.

Summary

Climate change carries important effects on human wellbeing and performance, and increasingly research is documenting the negative impacts of out-of-comfort temperatures on workplace performance. In this study, we investigate the plausibly causal effect of extreme temperatures, i.e., out-of-comfort, on language complexity among politicians, leveraging a fixed effects strategy. We analyze language complexity in over seven million parliamentary speeches across eight countries, connecting them with precise daily meteorological information. We find hot days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. Focusing on one country, we explore marginal effects by age and gender, suggesting high temperatures significantly impact older politicians at lower thresholds. The findings propose that political rhetoric is not only driven by political circumstances and strategic concerns but also by physiological responses to external environmental factors. Overall, the study holds important implications on how climate change could affect human cognitive performance and the quality of political discourse.

A geoengineering technique designed to reduce high temperatures in California could inadvertently intensify heatwaves in Europe, according to a study that models the unintended consequences of regional tinkering with a changing climate.

The paper shows that targeted interventions to lower temperature in one area for one season might bring temporary benefits to some populations, but this has to be set against potentially negative side-effects in other parts of the world and shifting degrees of effectiveness over time.

Abstract

Marine cloud brightening (MCB) is a geoengineering proposal to cool atmospheric temperatures and reduce climate change impacts. As large-scale approaches to stabilize global mean temperatures pose governance challenges, regional interventions may be more attractive near term. Here we investigate the efficacy of regional MCB in the North Pacific to mitigate extreme heat in the Western United States. Under present-day conditions, we find MCB in the remote mid-latitudes or proximate subtropics reduces the relative risk of dangerous summer heat exposure by 55% and 16%, respectively. However, the same interventions under mid-century warming minimally reduce or even increase heat stress in the Western United States and across the world. This loss of efficacy may arise from a state-dependent response of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to both anthropogenic warming and regional MCB. Our result demonstrates a risk in assuming that interventions effective under certain conditions will remain effective as the climate continues to change.

Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very big increase in loss of ice, scientists say

A newly identified tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica and elsewhere could mean future sea level rise is significantly higher than current projections.

A new study has examined how warming seawater intrudes between coastal ice sheets and the ground they rest on. The warm water melts cavities in the ice, allowing more water to flow in, expanding the cavities further in a feedback loop. This water then lubricates the collapse of ice into the ocean, pushing up sea levels.

Decision of the Federal Court of Justice:

The appeal was successful. The Federal Court of Justice ordered the defendant to cease and desist from the advertising and to reimburse pre-trial warning costs. Contrary to the opinion of the Court of Appeal, the advertising complained of is misleading within the meaning of Section 5 (1) UWG. The advertising is ambiguous because, according to the findings of the Court of Appeal, the term "climate-neutral" can be understood by the readers of the trade journal - no differently than by consumers - both in the sense of a reduction of CO2 in the production process and in the sense of a mere compensation of CO2. The Court of Appeal did not take into account that in the area of environment-related advertising - as with health-related advertising - the risk of misleading is particularly high and that there is an increased need to inform the relevant public about the meaning and content of the terms and signs used. In the case of advertising that uses an ambiguous environmental term such as "climate neutral", the specific meaning must therefore be explained in the advertising itself in order to avoid misleading the public. Informative references outside the environmental advertising are not sufficient in this respect. An explanation of the term "climate neutral" was necessary here in particular because the reduction and compensation of CO2 emissions are not equivalent measures for achieving climate neutrality.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) has been tracking wildfire emissions and resulting smoke transport in the Arctic Circle during June 2024. The majority of the wildfires are burning in the Sakha Republic of Russia, which experienced extensive high intensity wildfires in the summer of 2021. CAMS Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) dataset shows that June wildfire carbon emissions for the month are already the third highest in the last two decades, behind the significant fire seasons of 2019 and 2020.

The Arctic region of the Sakha Republic has been experiencing much higher surface air temperatures and drier surface conditions than usual for the time of year, providing the environmental conditions conducive to wildfires following ignition. CAMS scientists have been monitoring a significant increase in daily total fire radiative power (FRP), indicating the intensity of the fires, and smoke emissions across the region.

The June monthly total carbon emissions from the wildfires, estimated by CAMS from the FRP observations, are the third highest of the past two decades, at 6.8 megatonnes of carbon, behind June 2020 and 2019, which recorded 16.3 and 13.8 megatonnes of carbon respectively.

Mark Parrington, Senior Scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, says: “In the wildfire emissions monitoring that we do in CAMS we pay particular attention to high northern latitudes and the Arctic during the summer months. Fire emissions in the Arctic have been at fairly typical levels for the last three summers but we have observed the recent fires developing following warmer and drier conditions, similar to the widespread wildfires in 2019 and 2020. This is the third time since 2019 that we are observing significant Arctic wildfires and showed that this northeast region of the Arctic has experienced the largest increase in extreme wildfires over the last two decades.”

Changes in the Arctic climate are of great significance for everyone, as they impact the Earth system as a whole. With this in mind, CAMS has been cooperating with Arctic Basecamp on translating wildfire data into an alert system for remarkable climate events in the Arctic.

Gail Whiteman, Professor at the University of Exeter and founder of Arctic Basecamp comments: “The Arctic is ground zero for climate change and the increasing Siberian wildfires are a clear warning sign that this essential system is approaching dangerous climate tipping points. What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there - Arctic change amplifies risks globally for all of us. These fires are a warning cry for urgent action.”

In addition to the wildfires in the Arctic, CAMS has also been closely following the intensity and emissions of wildfires burning in the Pantanal wetlands, located in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. In the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso do Sul, (where most of the Pantanal wetlands are located) daily total FRP has been significantly above average for several weeks, and the total carbon emissions for May and June are more than double the previous highest values in the GFAS dataset during May-June 2009. The May-June total estimated emissions are also the highest of the past two decades for Bolivia and Paraguay and the highest for Brazil since 2004.

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

Scientists say that climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is likely to bring more extreme weather to the UK, including more frequent floods and droughts.

Farmers said they were not able to plant due to the wet weather, and this is borne out in the statistics. The growing area of vegetables was down, falling by 6.5% to 101,000 hectares. A dry early summer in 2023 also did not help, as those who could not irrigate found it hard to plant.

Wet weather in the autumn and winter meant that the planted area of brassicas decreased by 3.1% to 23,000 hectares, leading to a 0.4% fall in broccoli yields and a 9.2% year-on-year fall in cauliflower volumes. Onions fared similarly, with volumes down by 13% and a fall in production area of 3.6%. So did carrots; their yields fell by 7.2%.

Farmers said the next government needed a proper plan for food security as the UK’s climate becomes less predictable, with more extreme weather hitting farms.

Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of Riverford fruit and vegetable boxes, said the data was a “wake-up call, showing the dire state of British horticulture”.

He said the next government must plan to safeguard food security. “We urgently need a long-term and legally defined plan from government – not just on the environment, but to tackle the exploitative practices of supermarkets and their suppliers.” he said. “It’s high time we reinstated honesty and decency in our supply chains.”

The chair of the National Farmers’ Union horticulture and potatoes board, Martin Emmett, said: “These stark statistics are sadly not a surprise. Recent shortages of some of the nation’s favourite fruit and vegetables shows we cannot afford to let our production decline and that we must value our food security.

“The UK horticulture sector has the ambition to produce more and is an area ripe for growth, but it needs investment from the next government to match our ambition by backing our horticulture strategy.”

Julian Marks, group chief executive of Barfoots Farms, told the Grocer: “The latest set of Defra stats highlight the challenges growers have faced in the last 12 to 18 months with weather-related risk and extraordinary levels of input cost inflation.”

He added: “Though inflation has eased somewhat recently, it hasn’t gone away and weather risks have intensified over the winter, with heavy rain affecting soils and the ability of growers to plant for the coming season.”
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The UK government recently published its first official food security index, which described food security as “broadly stable”, and facing “longer-term risks” from climate change.

The issue is briefly mentioned in the manifestos for this week’s general election. The Conservatives pledged a UK where the “national, border, energy and food security are put first” and said they would introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.

Labour similarly said in its manifesto that “food security is national security” and that the party would “champion British farming whilst protecting the environment”. The Liberal Democrats have promised to put an extra £1bn a year into the farming payments schemes and pledged to introduce a “holistic and comprehensive national food strategy to ensure food security”.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was contacted for comment.