Tag: extreme weather events

bookmark_borderClimate Change: Rate of Acceleration

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By Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukhurjee
August 25, 2023

How fast are humans causing the climate to change? When we started our experiments in the 1990’s, we thought the time scale was in millenniums. If climate change were happening on a linear basis, we would have been correct; however, by the late 90’s we were convinced climate change was non-linear.

By 2020, there was enough data to see the “doubling period” of some anthropogenic climate affects had gone from 100 years to 10 years. For instance the rate of sea level rise has gone from about 1.5 millimeters per year to over 3 millimeters. We expect to see the doubling period to continue to shrink raising the possibility of sea levels rising a foot/year by 2050.

Though the rate of change in climate disasters’ intensity, duration, and likelihood vary according to the type of extreme weather, a “rule-of-thumb” can be derived from the Canada wildfires of 2023. The World Weather Attribution Organization found, “Climate change made the cumulative severity of Québec’s 2023 fire season to the end of July around 50% more intense, and seasons of this severity at least seven times more likely to occur.”

50% more intense
7 x more likely

These numbers may be similar in other catastrophes like hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, floods, tornadoes, and sea level rise.

If the doubling time remains at 10 years, we could see extreme events 100% more intense and/or longer in duration, as well as, 14 times more likely to occur. As mentioned above, we expect the doubling time to be reduced. If the doubling time is 5 years, in ten years we could see 200% more intense and longer extreme weather events being 28 times more likely to occur.

At what rate is climate change accelerating?
A: Rapidly
As described above, we do not know the rate of acceleration other than to say it is more rapid than previously thought. In the summer of 2023, the extreme temperatures left most climate scientists shocked. The average earth surface temperature recorded record highs for months reaching over 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement calls for keeping temperatures below 1.5 degrees. Scientists concur that a rise of 2 degrees will trigger feedback loops and tipping points. Triggering these tipping points results in the CO2 stored in nature to be released. Though we do not know how much carbon is stored in nature, it would be reasonable to assume that the temperature could be pushed from 3 degrees to 6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Humans can not thrive above a rise of 1.5 degrees. Humans can not survive if the temperature rises 6 degrees.

About the 2023 wildfires in Hawaii, Governor Josh Green said, “For perspective, we’ve had six fire emergencies this August, we had six fire emergencies between 1953 and 2003. That’s how- how fast things are changing. I know that there is debate out there whether we should be talking about climate change or not. Well, let’s be real world, climate change is here we are in the midst of it with a hotter planet, and fiercer storms.”

About the catastrophic die-off of 10,000 emperor penguin chicks in the Antarctic, Dr. Caroline Holmes of the British Antarctic Survey (an expert on Antarctic sea-ice) said, “What we’re seeing right now is so far outside what we’ve observed previously. We expected change but I don’t think we expected so much change so rapidly.”

What you can do today. How to save the planet.

Climate Change: The End of Times

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderClimate Change: Stranded on an Island

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by Daniel Brouse

Climate change brings with it the inevitability of rising sea levels. Even if green house gas emissions were stopped completely, the sea will continue to rise for hundreds or thousands of years.

Not only will the submerged properties be affected by the rising tides, so will all the new island properties. Initially, some properties will just be temporarily cut-off from civilization. Eventually, those temporary islands will become permanent.

An initial reaction may be “Oh, I’ve always wanted to live on island;” however, being stranded on a deserted island is not fun. It is important to look forward and evaluate the risk in value to real estate. Much of the newly isolated land will become worthless.

ARS Technica reports, “having a property above water won’t be much good if flooding nearby means you can’t get to a hospital or grocery store when you need to or lose access to electricity or other services. It’s entirely possible for rising seas to leave a property high, dry, but uninhabitable as rising seas cut connections to essential services. A group of researchers has analyzed the risk of isolation driven by sea level rise, and shows it’s a major contributor to the future risks the US faces.”

If you’re interested in comparing the risk of isolation to that of inundation, the researchers built a website that lets you explore the risks under different sea level rise scenarios.

The Journal Nature published “Risk of isolation increases the expected burden from sea-level rise”:

The typical displacement metric for sea-level rise adaptation planning is property inundation. However, this metric may underestimate risk as it does not fully capture the wider cascading or indirect effects of sea-level rise. To address this, we propose complementing it by considering the risk of population isolation: those who may be cut off from essential services. We investigate the importance of this metric by comparing the number of people at risk from inundation to the number of people at risk from isolation. Considering inundated roadways during mean higher high water tides in the coastal United States shows, although highly spatially variable, that the increase across the United States varies between 30% and 90% and is several times higher in some states. We find that risk of isolation may occur decades sooner than risk of inundation. Both risk metrics provide critical information for evaluating adaptation options and giving priority to support for at-risk communities.

More articles on Flood Insurance, Rising Sea Levels and Global Warming.

bookmark_borderManaged Retreat: Relocating Due to Climate Change Extreme Weather Events

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The Politico article Dream homes and disasters: Is the government ready to confront climate risk? explains the need for “Managed Retreat”.

“The fact that official Washington is finally addressing the concept of some areas being too vulnerable to insure is noteworthy….”

“For decades, lawmakers and federal agencies in Washington, D.C., have resisted taking harsh action to pull federal insurance funding from especially vulnerable areas, even as climate change made a mockery of 100-year projections…. Now, in the wake of disasters including the deadly Kentucky floods and Hurricane Ian, official Washington is openly wrestling with what to do about the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in areas that climate change is making too risky to inhabit.”

“If large numbers of communities are rendered undesirable because of their climate, local and regional real estate markets could tank. Expensive public infrastructure like water treatment systems and roads could be abandoned or become obsolete as people relocate. Heavy taxpayer spending is likely. Yet many experts say that proactively steering people away from places climate change is making nonviable will seem a bargain compared with the costs of rebuilding in the shadow of past and future disasters, floods and droughts.”

“… as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe, a once-taboo strategy known as “managed retreat” is getting more serious consideration in Congress and the federal government.”

“Human beings are terrible at assessing risk,” Kralicek (the emergency manager for Tulsa and Tulsa County) said. “We’re awful at it. Which is why things like casinos do so well.”

Recent federal policy changes might help to limit those losses. But until there’s a wholesale rethink of how — and where — cities, towns and counties develop, there will be more hardship.

“The piper is gonna come call, and at some point you got to pay,” Kralicek added. “And you just got to figure out who’s paying.”

Making people pay
One way to push people to make rational decisions is to force them to pay more if they don’t.

In October 2021, FEMA rolled out its long-awaited revamp to the federal flood insurance program, known as Risk Rating 2.0. The effort aims to align insurance premium pricing with the actual flood risk homes face. FEMA hopes doing so will limit losses to the chronically indebted, taxpayer-funded federal flood insurance program and also signal to would-be homeowners that some places face significant danger.

“There is no greater risk-communication tool than a pricing signal. When we distort the price, we distort their understanding of risk,” said Wright, the former FEMA flood insurance chief.

Risk Rating 2.0: Equity in Action
FEMA Flood Insurance Risk Rating 2.0

FEMA is updating the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) risk rating methodology through the implementation of a new pricing methodology called Risk Rating 2.0.

FEMA is committed to building a culture of preparedness across the nation. Purchasing flood insurance is the first line of defense against flood damage and a step toward a quicker recovery following a flood.

Since the 1970s, rates have been predominantly based on relatively static measurements, emphasizing a property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM).

This approach does not incorporate as many flooding variables as Risk Rating 2.0. Risk Rating 2.0 is not just a minor improvement, but a transformational leap forward. Risk Rating 2.0 enables FEMA to set rates that are fairer and ensures rate increases and decreases are both equitable.

FEMA is building on years of investment in flood hazard information by incorporating private sector data sets, catastrophe models and evolving actuarial science.

With Risk Rating 2.0, FEMA now has the capability and tools to address rating disparities by incorporating more flood risk variables. These include flood frequency, multiple flood types—river overflow, storm surge, coastal erosion and heavy rainfall—and distance to a water source along with property characteristics such as elevation and the cost to rebuild.

Currently, policyholders with lower-valued homes are paying more than their share of the risk while policyholders with higher-valued homes are paying less than their share of the risk. Because Risk Rating 2.0 considers rebuilding costs, FEMA can equitably distribute premiums across all policyholders based on home value and a property’s unique flood risk.

Rates can increase 18% per year.

More articles on Flood Insurance, Extreme Weather Events and Global Warming.

bookmark_borderGlobal Carbon Budget 2022

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The Global Carbon Budget 2022 was published by Earth System Science Data.

The report says if emissions aren’t brought down, the world will use up its 1.5-degree-Celsius carbon budget — the amount of CO2 we can emit and stay within 1.5C — within nine years. After go beyond 1.5C the amount of tipping points crossed will bring on irreversible and exponential increasing rates of catastrophic damage.

Global fossil CO2 emissions (including cement carbonation) further increased in 2022, being now slightly above their pre-COVID-19 pandemic 2019 level. The 2021 emission increase was 0.46 GtC yr−1 (1.7 GtCO2 yr−1), bringing 2021 emissions to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 (36.3 ± 1.8 GtCO2 yr−1), same as the 2019 emissions level. Preliminary estimates based on data available suggest fossil CO2 emissions continued to increase by 1.0 % in 2022 relative to 2021 (0.1 % to 1.9 %), bringing emissions of 10.0 GtC yr−1 (36.6 GtCO2 yr−1), slightly above the 2019 level.

Emissions from coal, oil, and gas in 2022 are expected to be above their 2021 levels (by 1.0 %, 2.2 % and −0.2 % respectively). Regionally, emissions in 2022 are expected to have decreased by 0.9 % in China (3.1 GtC, 11.4 GtCO2) and 0.8 % in the European Union (0.8 GtC, 2.8 GtCO2) but increased by 1.5 % in the United States (1.4 GtC, 5.1 GtCO2), 6 % in India (0.8 GtC, 2.9 GtCO2), and 1.7 % in the rest of the world (4.2 GtC, 15.4 GtCO2).

atmospheric CO2 concentration
atmospheric CO2 concentration

Anthropologic Climate Change

bookmark_border1/3 of World Heritage Glaciers Will Disappear by 2050

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The United Nations says, “New UNESCO data highlight the accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050. But it is still possible to save the other two thirds, if the rise in global temperatures does not exceed 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period.”

The UNESCO report World Heritage Glaciers found:

Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change.

Glaciers in a third of UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades.

Mount Kilimanjaro’s last glaciers will vanish as will glaciers in the Alps and Yosemite National Park in the US.

They will melt regardless of the world’s actions to combat climate change.

50 UNESCO World Heritage sites are home to glaciers (A total of 18,600 glaciers have been identified in these 50 sites, covering around 66,000 km2), representing almost 10% of the Earth’s total glacierized area. They include the highest (next to Mt. Everest), the longest (in Alaska), and the last remaining glaciers in Africa, amongst others, giving a representative overview of the general situation of glaciers in the world.

But a new study by UNESCO, in partnership with IUCN, shows these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions, which are warming temperatures. They are currently losing 58 billion tons of ice every year – equivalent to the combined annual water use of France and Spain– and are responsible for nearly 5% of observed global sea-level rise.
Only one effective solution: quickly reduce CO2 emissions

The report concludes that glaciers in a third of the 50 World Heritage sites are condemned to disappear by 2050, regardless of efforts to limit temperature increases. But it is still possible to save the glaciers in the remaining two thirds of sites if the rise in temperatures does not exceed 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period.

“We hope we might be wrong, but this is the hard science,” said UNESCO project officer Tales Carvalho Resende, one of the authors. “Glaciers are one of the valuable indicators of climate change, because they’re visible. This is something we can really see happening.”

The remaining glaciers in the other two thirds of UN World Heritage sites could be saved, but only if the world limits global warming to 1.5C, the authors say. Another UN report last week found that the world currently had “no credible pathway” to achieve that.

“What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening,” said Beata Csatho, a glaciologist from the University of Buffalo.

“In the middle of the 1900s, glaciers were quite stable,” she said. “Then there is this incredibly fast retreat.”

“This is really a call to take action at every level – not only at the political level, but at our level as human beings,” said Carvalho Resende.

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet |
Anthropologic Climate Change

bookmark_borderAntarctica and Greenland Ice Melt Faster Than Anticipated

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Antarctica’s Collapse Could Begin Even Sooner Than Anticipated
The article in Scientific American states, “Two expeditions to the Thwaites Ice Shelf have revealed that it could splinter apart in less than a decade, hastening sea-level rise worldwide.

“As Scambos and Wild gazed down from their Twin Otter plane this past January, they spotted several new tears in the shelf—three kilometers long and several hundred meters wide—where it lifts off the seafloor. Ragged cliffs of ice tilted 50 meters up into the air, exposing deep layers that had not seen daylight for thousands of years. “I think it’s losing contact with everything that used to be bracing it,” Scambos says. Not only is the ice shelf separating from its pinning point. As it speeds up, it is also stretching and tearing away from the glacier upstream.

The team was so alarmed that Pettit and Wild decided they will return this December to install a new instrument station: “BOB,” short for Breakup Observer. They hope BOB will survive long enough to record the final throes of the ice shelf as it fractures into shards. It might not take long.”

Greenland Rainfall and Albedo Feedback
The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) released the report State of the Climate in Europe 2021. “Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years — the highest of any continent in the world. As the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate change impacts will affect society, economies and ecosystems, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).”

“Temperatures over Europe have warmed significantly over the 1991-2021 period, at an average rate of about +0.5℃ per decade. As a result, Alpine glaciers lost 30 meters in ice thickness from 1997 to 2021. The Greenland ice sheet is melting and contributing to accelerating sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland saw a melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.”

Does the rainfall have a significant impact? Yes; however, it is the Albedo Feedback that is of the most concern.

“It turns out that the rain itself wasn’t the most important factor”, says Prof. Jason Box from GEUS and lead author of the paper Greenland Ice Sheet Rainfall, Heat and Albedo Feedback Impacts From the Mid-August 2021 Atmospheric River reporting their results in Geophysical Research Letters.

“There is an irony. It’s not really the rain that did the damage to the snow and ice, it’s the darkening effect of the meltwater and how the heat from the event erased snow that had overlaid darker ice across the lower third of the ice sheet.”

“Unusually warm atmospheric rivers swept along Greenland in the late summer months, bringing potent melt conditions when the melt season was drawing to a close.”

“The researchers found that, between 19 and 20 August 2021, this melt caused the altitude of the ice sheet’s snowline near Kangerlussuaq to retreat in elevation by a whopping 788 metres, the snowline retreated, exposing a wide area of dark bare ice. Under normal circumstances, snow would cover and insulate this ice, but the snow melted suddenly and exposed the ice to heat, causing even more melting.”

“The authors conclude that the heatwave causing the rain event serves as an excellent example of ‘melt-albedo feedback that amplifies the melt impact of the initial melt perturbation'”.

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet |
Anthropologic Climate Change

bookmark_borderAntarctic Ice Sheet and Accelerating Ice loss

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A discovery made by researchers at Imperial College London, the University of Waterloo, Canada, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and Newcastle University, shows a river longer than the Thames beneath Antarctic ice sheet.

The study explains how the Antarctic ice sheet has a river running under it. The headline “longer than the Thames” isn’t the thrust of the problem. Yes, it is adding a small amount to the rise in sea level. More importantly is not it’s length but rather its width that is critical to our survival. A very wide and thin layer of water is separating the ice sheet from the surface… accelerating the expected time for the collapse of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The surface temperature and tenths of a degree crossed over time is fairly irrelevant when compared to the collapse of the ice sheet. Before we reach +2C, the Antarctic ice sheet will collapse. When the ice sheet collapses, life as we know it will change. In many ways it will be similar to a meteor hitting the ocean. Dr. William Colgan said, “A collapse of the colossal east Antarctic ice sheet, would lead to a 52-metre rise in sea levels…” Besides the instant wiping out of all coast lines, there would likely be tsunamis and other impacts including an acceleration in global warming as the surface is turned from reflective ice to heat absorbing dark surfaces.

The study finds:
An unexpected river under the Antarctic ice sheet affects the flow and melting of ice, potentially accelerating ice loss as the climate warms.

The 460km-long river is revealed in a new study, which details how it collects water at the base of the Antarctic ice sheet from an area the size of Germany and France combined. Its discovery shows the base of the ice sheet has more active water flow than previously thought, which could make it more susceptible to changes in climate.

The discovery was made by researchers at Imperial College London, the University of Waterloo, Canada, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and Newcastle University, with the details published today in Nature Geoscience.

Co-author Professor Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: “When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other. Now we are starting to understand there are whole systems down there, interconnected by vast river networks, just as they might be if there weren’t thousands of metres of ice on top of them.

“The region where this study is based holds enough ice to raise the sea level globally by 4.3m. How much of this ice melts, and how quickly, is linked to how slippery the base of the ice is. The newly discovered river system could strongly influence this process.”

Water sources
Water can appear beneath ice sheets in two main ways: from surface meltwater running down through deep crevasses, or by melting at the base, caused by the natural heat of the Earth and friction as the ice moves over land.

However, the ice sheets around the north and south poles have different characteristics. In Greenland, the surface experiences strong melting over the summer months, where immense amounts of water channel down through deep crevasses called moulins.

The situations in the Greenland summer (left) and the new system found in Antarctica
The situations in the Greenland summer (left) and the new system found in Antarctica

In Antarctica, however, the surface doesn’t melt in sufficient quantities to create moulins, as the summers are still too cold. It was thought this meant that there was relatively little water at the base of the Antarctic ice sheets.

The new discovery turns this idea on its head, showing there is sufficient water from basal melt alone to create huge river systems under kilometres-thick ice.

Improving predictions
The discovery was made through a combination of airborne radar surveys that allow researchers to look beneath the ice and modelling of the ice sheet hydrology. The team focussed on a largely inaccessible and understudied area that includes ice from both the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets and reaches the Weddell Sea.

That such a large system could be undiscovered until now is testament to how much we still need to learn about the continent, says lead researcher Dr Christine Dow from the University of Waterloo.

She said: “From satellite measurements we know which regions of Antarctica are losing ice, and how much, but we don’t necessarily know why. This discovery could be a missing link in our models. We could be hugely underestimating how quickly the system will melt by not accounting for the influence of these river systems.

“Only by knowing why ice is being lost can we make models and predictions of how the ice will react in the future under further global heating, and how much this could raise global sea levels.”

For example, the newly discovered river emerges into the sea beneath a floating ice shelf – where a glacier extending out from the land is buoyant enough to begin floating on the ocean water. The freshwater from the river however churns up warmer water towards the bottom of the ice shelf, melting it from below.

Co-author Dr Neil Ross, from the University of Newcastle, said: “Previous studies have looked at the interaction between the edges of ice sheets and ocean water to determine what melting looks like. However, the discovery of a river that reaches hundreds of kilometres inland driving some of these processes shows that we cannot understand the ice melt fully without considering the whole system: ice sheet, ocean, and freshwater.”

A changing Antarctica
The existence of large under-ice rivers also needs to be taken into account when predicting the possible consequences of climate change in the region. For example, if summers warm enough to cause enough surface melt that the water reaches the base of the ice sheet, it could have large effects on the river systems, potentially tipping Antarctica to a Greenland-like state, where ice loss is much faster.

There are also potential feedback loops that would accelerate ice loss. For example, if the ice starts to flow faster as water accumulated at the base, then this will increase friction where the ice runs over dry land, which could increase the amount of basal melting and water produced.

The team are now looking to gather more data about all these mechanisms from surveys to apply their models to other regions and provide a better understanding of how a changing Antarctica could change the planet.

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet

Anthropologic Climate Change

bookmark_borderThe Missing Risks of Climate Change

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The Journal Nature published the report The missing risks of climate change. The paper found that there are many risks associated with climate change that are not being considered in economic analysis. (The Climate Endgame also found inadequacies in current risk management analysis.)

Abstract

The risks of climate change are enormous, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions to billions of people. The economic consequences of many of the complex risks associated with climate change cannot, however, currently be quantified. Here we argue that these unquantified, poorly understood and often deeply uncertain risks can and should be included in economic evaluations and decision-making processes. We present an overview of these unquantified risks and an ontology of them founded on the reasons behind their lack of robust evaluation. These consist of risks missing owing to delays in sharing knowledge and expertise across disciplines, spatial and temporal variations of climate impacts, feedbacks and interactions between risks, deep uncertainty in our knowledge, and currently unidentified risks. We highlight collaboration needs within and between the natural and social science communities to address these gaps. We also provide an approach for integrating assessments or speculations of these risks in a way that accounts for interdependencies, avoids double counting and makes assumptions clear. Multiple paths exist for engaging with these missing risks, with both model-based quantification and non-model-based qualitative assessments playing crucial roles. A wide range of climate impacts are understudied or challenging to quantify, and are missing from current evaluations of the climate risks to lives and livelihoods. Strong interdisciplinary collaboration and deeper engagement with uncertainty is needed to properly inform policymakers and the public about climate risks.
Main

There is overwhelming evidence that the risks and impacts from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are very significant, will impact nearly every aspect of human life and the environment, and could ultimately prove to be devastating. An apparent incongruity exists between the pervasiveness of anticipated physical changes and the relatively modest total losses often estimated in economic evaluations1,2. Part of the explanation for this mismatch comes from ‘missing risks’: the risks that are not currently included in economic evaluations because of their uncertainty, because of our limited understanding of them or because existing economic models do not capture them in sufficient detail.

The interplay within and between different physical and social systems plays a crucial role in defining when and where impacts will manifest themselves, and these interactions are often only poorly understood. This leads to large and growing uncertainty estimates and a wide range of incompletely understood and underestimated risks3. For example, the potential for climate change impacts to drive social discontent, dislocation and relocation, and instability and conflict, are all deeply uncertain, but potentially crippling.

Excluding these risks from economic assessments is equivalent to placing a probability of zero on their occurrence. This, clearly, is not the case. Similarly, the common practice of engaging with only the expected levels of impacts and reporting central confidence bounds can undermine the ability of decision-makers to engage with the actual range of risks. The overall consequence is an underestimation of the total risks of climate change. This Perspective aims to identify, classify and suggest ways to engage with some of the most significant risks that are not currently captured by socioeconomic evaluations of climate change, from both a natural perspective and a social perspective. As an example of how this can be achieved, we present a demonstration of how diverse impact estimates or assumptions can be coherently combined.
Background

The complexity of feedback systems has slowed the process of both understanding them and modelling them. Compound, sequential, and concurrent extremes would lead to lower thresholds (for a single driver) for substantial impacts as well as deeper impacts when two drivers align53. The overall lack of representation for this type of secondary effect leads to an underestimation of risk.

Understanding the risk of 2 °C, 3 °C and 4 °C global mean surface temperature anomalies requires not only a reporting of the existing risks that models provide but also the incorporation of new classes of risks as well as the potential for disruptive unknown risks that could dramatically alter the context of future societal systems and anthropogenic climate change risks. It is hoped that recognition of these ‘missing risks’ will improve the overall level of accounting for consequences associated with climate change under credible warming scenarios.

Global Warming

bookmark_borderClimate Change: No Credible Pathway to 1.5C Limit

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The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) insisted there is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place.” The report Climate change: No ‘credible pathway’ to 1.5C limit found:

National pledges to reduce harmful emissions offer little hope of avoiding climate disaster, UN climate experts said on Thursday, in an urgent appeal for a radical transformation of the energy sector, before it’s too late.

There’s “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” today, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) insisted in a new report, despite legally binding promises made at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference to prevent average temperatures rising by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Uncomfortable truth
“This report tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been telling us all year, through deadly floods, storms and raging fires: we have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.

“We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.”

Despite Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) promises made by governments in favour of reducing their carbon footprint, pledges made since the last climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 will lead to cuts of less than one per cent of projected 2030 greenhouse gas emissions, according to UNEP.
Paltry reductions

This is the equivalent of just 0.5 gigatonnes of CO2, UNEP calculated, adding that only a 45 per cent emissions reduction will limit global warming to 1.5C.

As it stands today, latest data indicates that the world is on track for a temperature rise of between 2.4C and 2.6C by the end of this century.

“In the best-case scenario, full implementation of unconditional NDCs and additional net-zero emissions commitments point to only a 1.8C increase, so there is hope. However, this scenario is not currently credible based on the discrepancy between current emissions, short-term NDC targets and long-term net-zero targets,” UNEP said.
Fossil fuel-free solution

For the situation to improve, a “large-scale, rapid” and fossil fuel-free shake-up is needed of our “electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems” to cut emissions by 45 per cent to limit global warming to 1.5C, and by 30 per cent to keep average temperature rise to 2C, the UN agency explained.

And although the transformation towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is underway in electricity supply, industry, transportation and buildings, it needs to move “much faster”, the report concludes.

It found that electricity supply transformation had made most progress in some countries, amid dramatically reduced renewable electricity prices.

“It is a tall, and some would say impossible order, to reform the global economy and almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but we must try,” said Ms. Andersen. “Every fraction of a degree matters: to vulnerable communities, to species and ecosystems, and to every one of us.”
Food system reform

Rapid and lasting emissions cuts are needed in food production industries too, as this accounts for about a third of greenhouse gases, UNEP continued.

It noted that action in four areas – protection of natural ecosystems, dietary changes, improvements in farm food production and decarbonization of food supply chains – would reduce food system emissions by 2050 to around a third of current levels.

Global Warming

bookmark_borderClimate Plans Remain Insufficient: More Ambitious Action Needed Now

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The UN’s United in Science 2022 release their report A multi-organization high-level compilation of the most recent science related to climate change, impacts and responses.

In order to avoid catastrophic climate change, greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030. Currently, greenhouse gas emissions will INCREASE by 13% by 2030.

“According to the report, the combined climate pledges of 193 Parties under the Paris Agreement could put the world on track for around 2.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.”

Countries’ climate promises still not enough to avoid catastrophic global warming
The current combined National Determined Contributions (NDCs)—meaning the countries’ national efforts to tackle emissions and mitigate climate change—are leading our planet to at least 2.5 degrees warming, a level deemed catastrophic by scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

According to the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch, atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations continue to rise,
despite emissions reductions in 2020 resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The Global Carbon Project also
notes that, in 2021, global fossil CO2 emissions returned to 2019 pre-pandemic levels after a large, but temporary, absolute
drop in emissions due to widespread lockdowns. These conditions are leading to increasing global surface temperature and
other climatic changes, as highlighted by the WMO State of the Global Climate 2021 report, which found the most recent
seven years, 2015 to 2021, to be the warmest on record.

Looking forward, the Met Office (UK), in partnership with the World Climate Research Programme, found that there is a 48%
chance that, during at least one year in the next five years, annual mean temperature will temporarily be 1.5 °C higher than
in 1850-1900. Additionally, there is a 93% chance that at least one year in the same time period will be the hottest on record.
The UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report found that the full implementation of mitigation pledges
made by countries (as of 4 November 2021) is insufficient and will not keep global warming below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
levels. The report also found that the ambition of these pledges would need to be four times higher to keep global temperature
rise below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and seven times higher to limit warming to 1.5 °C. Enhanced mitigation action
is needed to prevent the goals of the Paris Agreement from slipping out of reach.

Without ambitious action, the physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change will be devastating. Irreversible
physical changes in the climate system, known as tipping points, can not be ruleld out and could have significant global
and regional consequences. According to the Urban Climate Change Research Network, cities – responsible for up to 70%
of human-caused emissions – will face increasing climate impacts that will intersect with socioeconomic inequalities.
Additionally, the WMO World Weather Research Programme highlights that it is the world’s most vulnerable populations
that will suffer the most, as has already been observed during recent extreme weather events.

Billions of people around the world are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. As a result, adaptation and
disaster risk reduction are crucial to lower the risks to climate impacts. According to WMO and the UN Office for Disaster
Risk Reduction, early warning systems not only save lives and reduce losses and damages, but also contribute to disaster
risk reduction, and support climate change adaptation. However, less than half of all countries in the world have these
crucial systems and coverage is particuarly low in vulnerable countries. To address this issue, the United Nations Secretary-
General António Guterres called for new action to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems in
the next five years.

Additionally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released highly anticipated Working Group reports
covering The Physical Science Basis; Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; and Mitigation of Climate Change, which are an
integral part of its Sixth Assessment Report. These important reports identify the strength of scientific agreement in these
different areas as well as where further research is needed.

The science is clear – urgent action is needed to mitigate emissions and adapt to our changing climate. The United Nations
system, along with its partners, will continue to provide world-leading science to inform decision-making and support
global climate action.

Global Warming.