Climate Change

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Know the climate requirements of your fruits! Know the impact of future climate change on your region! The trees that you plant today will need to endure the climate conditions decades from now.

The number and diversity of insects is declining worldwide. Some studies suggest that their biomass has almost halved since the 1970s. Among the main reasons for this are habitat loss—for example through agriculture or urbanization—and climate change.

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archived (Wayback Machine): - Mongabay article - Nature study as webpage and PDF

archived (Wayback Machine): - Mongabay article - Nature study as webpage and PDF

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Wildfires driven by climate change contribute to as many as thousands of annual deaths and billions of dollars in economic costs from wildfire smoke in the United States, according to a new study.

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Note that future warming is likely to be up to 50% greater than stated in this article.

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archived (Wayback Machine): - news article - NASA analysis

Note that this analysis may underestimate climate sensitivity.

The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an organization of governments that are members of the UN or the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Created in 1988 by the WMO and the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), the purpose of the UN IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

In western Argentina, five lakes within a national park continue to shrink. Scientific findings are now paving the way for restoration efforts—but ongoing federal funding cuts now pose another threat.

The Madeira River, the largest tributary of the Amazon, has been losing water flow over the last 20 years while facing severe droughts.

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As the world warms, driving sea levels higher, saltwater is encroaching along the world’s coasts and into its estuaries. The seawater invasion can overtake the freshwater that gives life to deciduous trees

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Archive link: https://archive.is/4y4Mo

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Nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and/or sold under refrigeration. The United States already boasts an estimated 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space—a third polar region of sorts. Equal to what 244,444,444 domestic refrigerators (at 22.5 cubic feet on average) could hold. This is an almost unimaginably large volume: the tallest mountain on Earth, Everest, occupies only roughly two-thirds that amount of space from base to peak.

One expert speaking at a forum on insurance and housing says climate change could soon mark a “death spiral” for the financial industry in parts of the country.

Abstract

Global average surface temperatures shattered all-time records in 2023 at 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above pre-industrial levels (WMO 2024). Worsened by climate change-induced drought, Canadian wildfires burned 18.5 million hectares, nearly three-times more land area than in any previous year on record (NRC 2023). Parts of the Amazon River reached their lowest levels in 120 years of data-keeping and, in places, recorded surface water temperatures near 40 °C (Rodrigues 2023). The world has reached the threshold of a 1.5 °C increase in global average surface temperature and is only beginning to experience the full consequences.

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Scientists on Union glacier in Antarctica fear the region is reaching a dangerous tipping point.

Investors rage at allegations bank broke its climate pledge to raise funds for mining giant

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Massive wildfires that killed at least 32 people and scorched an area nearly double the size of Seoul in late March could become more common under human-driven climate change, scientists warn.

Humid heat is related to heat stress, occurring when environmental conditions overwhelm the body's ability to cool itself. Severe heat stress leads to an increase in the core body temperature of 3°C or more and can cause confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness. If not treated promptly, severe heat stress can lead to muscle damage, major organ failure, and death.

Pushed to the brink by heat and injustice, South Asia’s workers demand reparations from fossil fuel corporations.

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In Brazil, the Jequitinhonha Valley, where the four Maxakali territories are located, has suffered a dramatic rise in temperatures in recent years. Twenty Brazilian cities registered temperatures five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average daily maximum. The city of Araçua even shattered the record for the hottest temperature in Brazil’s history in November of that year. More than 85 percent of the Atlantic Forest has been destroyed. In Minas Gerais, experts estimate, less than eight percent remains. Brazil's dictatorship set the stage for even greater destruction of the region's tropical forests. In less than nine months, 24,475 wildfires were tallied — far exceeding the previous record high in the whole of 2021. Grass fires can spread four times as quickly as forest fires, leading the Maxakali to nickname the invasive plant “kerosene”. Some experts consider the Atlantic Forest to be regionally extinct. Singing organises life in Maxakali villages: music is used to cure illness, teach history or transmit practical instructions. Twelve musical canons, distinct in grammar and lexicon, total about 360 hours of song. Contained in the lyrics are hundreds of species of flora and fauna now extinct in the territory. Nursery caretakers sing to seeds as they are buried. The song lyrics help participants remember the ecological knowledge of their ancestors. Since its inception in 2023, the Hmhi project has planted over 60 hectares (148 acres) of fruit trees and 383 acres of Atlantic Forest vegetation. Programme participants have organised themselves into a provisional fire brigade.

The Trump administration aims to make fossil fuels cheap—so cheap they wouldn’t be worth extracting. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth,” one oil executive has said.

What was once considered rare has become alarmingly common, as climate change accelerates the frequency and severity of such events,” said an editorial in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. The country “remains woefully unprepared for the escalating climate crisis”, it said.

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Brazilian prosecutors are calling for the cancellation of the largest carbon credit deal in the Amazon Rainforest, saying it breaks national law and risks harming Indigenous communities. The 1 billion real ($175 million) contract, signed last year by the state of Pará, promises to sell up to 12 million metric tons of forest-based carbon credits to the LEAF Coalition, comprised of the U.S., U.K. and Norwegian governments, and companies like Amazon, Bayer, H&M and Walmart. Prosecutors allege that the deal violates a law passed two months after its signing that bans the future sale of carbon credits, characterizing it as “an extractive and colonialist” form of negotiating and privatizing traditional territories.

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When the state’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the nation’s most successful youth climate suit, it sparked a Republican backlash that could lead to fundamental changes in Montana’s courts and environmental laws.

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The high growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2023 was found to be caused by a severe reduction of the global net land carbon sink. Here we update the global CO2 budget from January 1st to July 1st 2024, during which El Niño drought conditions continued to prevail in the Tropics but ceased by March 2024. We used three dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs), machine learning emulators of ocean models, three atmospheric inversions driven by observations from the second Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, and near-real-time fossil CO2 emissions estimates. In a one-year period from July 2023 to July 2024 covering the El Niño 2023/24 event, we found a record-high CO2 growth rate of 3.66±0.09 ppm~yr−1 (±~1 standard deviation) since 1979. Yet, the CO2 growth rate anomaly obtained after removing the long term trend is 1.1 ppm~yr−1, which is marginally smaller than the July--July growth rate anomalies of the two major previous El Niño events in 1997/98 and 2015/16. The atmospheric CO2 growth rate anomaly was primarily driven by a 2.24 GtC~yr−1 reduction in the net land sink including 0.3 GtC~yr−1 of fire emissions, partly offset by a 0.38 GtC~yr−1 increase in the ocean sink relative to the 2015--2022 July--July mean. The tropics accounted for 97.5\% of the land CO2 flux anomaly, led by the Amazon (50.6\%), central Africa (34\%), and Southeast Asia (8.2\%), with extra-tropical sources in South Africa and southern Brazil during April--July 2024. Our three DGVMs suggest greater tropical CO2 losses in 2023/2024 than during the two previous large El Niño in 1997/98 and 2015/16, whereas inversions indicate losses more comparable to 2015/16. Overall, this update of the low latency budget highlights the impact of recent El Niño droughts in explaining the high CO2 growth rate until July 2024.

A new study finds that presenting the same continuous climate data, such as incremental changes in temperature, in binary form -- such as whether a lake did or did not freeze in the winter -- significantly increases people's ability to see the impact of climate change.

Tropical deforestation was found to cause large reductions in precipitation using a range of observation-based datasets1. However, the limitations of satellite-based space-for-time statistical analysis have hindered understanding of the roles of reshaped mesoscale atmospheric circulation and regional precipitation recycling at different scales. These effects are considered nonlocal effects, which are distinct from the local effects governed by deforestation-induced reductions in evapotranspiration (ET). Here we show reversed precipitation responses to Amazon deforestation across wet and dry seasons. During the wet season, deforested grids experienced a noteworthy increase in precipitation (0.96 mm per month per percentage point forest loss), primarily attributed to enhanced mesoscale atmospheric circulation (that is, nonlocal effect). These nonlocal increases weaken with distance from deforested grids, leading to significant precipitation reductions in buffers beyond 60 km. Conversely, during the dry season, precipitation decreases in deforested grids and throughout all analysis buffers, with local effects from reduced ET dominating. Our findings highlight the intricate balance between local effects and nonlocal effects in driving deforestation-precipitation responses across different seasons and scales and emphasize the urgent need to address the rapid and extensive loss of forest in the Amazon region.

Archived (Wayback Machine): - earth.com article - full study in Science

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This is despite weak La Niña conditions during the first two months of the year – which typically result in cooler temperatures.

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Carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers have likely caused trillions of dollars in economic damages due to intensifying heatwaves over the last 30 years, according to new peer-reviewed research.

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The open-access paper is here (webpage) or here (PDF)

Coral reefs around the world have been subjected to unprecedented heat stress since early 2023. A new report finds heat-related coral bleaching has damaged corals in more than 80 countries, making it the most extensive bleaching event ever recorded, with no clear end in sight.

Agroforestry is recognized as a way to boost local biodiversity, improve soils and diversify farming incomes. New research suggests it may also benefit nearby forests by reducing pressure to clear them.