'Ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever:' 3 Climate records broken in 2024
This year has been marked by high temperatures and extreme weather events.
The year 2024 has been another challenging one for Earth's climate, marked by record temperatures, extreme weather events, and urgent warnings from scientists about the accelerating pace of global warming.
An analysis by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union agency that tracks global warming, suggests this year will be the hottest since instrument record keeping began more than a century ago — beating climate records set just last year.
2024 will also be the first calendar year in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the target set under the Paris Agreement to limit the worst effects of climate change. A single year above the threshold "does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached," the deputy director of C3S Samantha Burgess said in a recent news release, "but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever."
Earth surpasses 1.5 C warming every month for entire year
The year began with the continuation of a record 13-month heat streak, which ended in July as the natural El Niño climate pattern subsided. This period included an exceptionally warm summer that broke all-time heat records across the U.S., with multiple cities on both coasts sweltering through their hottest temperatures in seven decades of recordkeeping.
This year's Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended on Nov. 30, showed above-average activity with 18 named storms, including the record-setter Hurricane Helene that slammed into Florida's Big Bend region, the deadliest to affect the continental U.S. since Katrina in 2005, according to NOAA.
"The impactful and deadly 2024 hurricane season started off intensely, then relaxed a bit before roaring back," Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said in a recent statement.
Meanwhile an unusually high number of lightning-caused fires in western Canada, including a particularly destructive one in the tourist town of Jasper, caused the country to witness its second-worst wildfire season following last year's devastating wildfires.
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"We have some fires that ignited in 2022 and 2023 that are still burning on Oct. 1, 2024 and will still be burning in 2025," Lori Daniels, a wildfire expert and a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, told CBC news.
Severe drought reduces Amazon Basin rivers to record low
The Amazon basin's worst drought ever, which began last year and persisted into this year, caused major rivers to dwindle to critically low levels, stranded communities accessible only by boats, and led to a spike in illnesses due to children resorting to drinking dirty water.
The drought, along with illegal clearing of the Amazon rainforest for agriculture, has been linked to the catastrophic wildfire season in South America, particularly in the Pantanal and in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina. In Brazil, for instance, the most intense fire in seven decades recently scorched an area the size of Italy — much larger than last year.
"The forest used to be able to resist those fires," Rachel Biderman, who leads American nonprofit Conservation International's work in South America, said in a statement.
"Now, because of climate change, because of continued degradation of the forest, and because it's the second year of drought in a row, the forest became so, so dry that it's catching fire as it wouldn't before."
A warming Arctic tundra now releases more carbon than it absorbs
Scientists at NOAA are closely monitoring a changing climate in the Arctic tundra region, where annual surface air temperatures ranked the second warmest since 1900. The region has been a carbon sink for millennia — it absorbs more carbon dioxide than it releases thanks to its cold temperatures and frozen soils. But a new NOAA Arctic Report Card notes the region has now become a source of greenhouse gas emissions as they thaw and release that trapped carbon and methane into the air, a shift that is also impacted by increased wildfire activity. In September, the extent of sea ice was the sixth lowest in 45 years of satellite recordkeeping.
"This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution," Rick Spinrad, NOAA Administrator, said in a press release.
"Every year brings something new for the Arctic Ocean," Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, added in a different statement. "This summer we saw very early ice loss in Hudson Bay, open water near the North Pole and a stubborn ice floe near the Bering Strait that persisted through the summer melt season. While it wasn't a new record low, this year's sea ice minimum is yet another example of a changed Arctic environment."
These events have propelled humanity into a critical and unpredictable phase of the climate crisis, but certain aspects of global warming, such as intense heat waves to loss of sea ice, can still be reversed with aggressive action to reduce emissions that keeps warming below 3 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists say.
"There's still time to do that," Michael Mann, a climatologist and author of the book "Our Fragile Moment" on Earth's climate past and future, said in a podcast last year. "The obstacles are not physical. They're not technological — they're entirely political at this point."
Some of those challenges came to the forefront late last month at the United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan, where an agreement by about two dozen industrialised countries to contribute $300 billion a year by 2035 — meant to help developing nations build infrastructure to transition away from fossil fuels to prepare for climate change — was met with strong criticism and called "chaotic, poorly managed" and "nothing more than an optical illusion."
The agreement has set the stage for next year's climate summit, which will take place in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, where nations will gather to plan climate actions for the next decade.
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Sharmila Kuthunur is a Seattle-based science journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. Follow her on X @skuthunur.
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Classical Motion The only actionable solution for energy is deep bore holes. We need to pour money into a deep hole.Reply -
Unclear Engineer The statementReply
"The obstacles are not physical. They're not technological — they're entirely political at this point."
misses the point entirely.
The reason that there is political opposition is because of the effects of the "solutions" on the lives of people - too many do not agree to accept those effects. So, the technology that is being proposed is not adequate to achieve the changes it is intended to achieve.
The costs and the decisions of who will bear them and who will benefit from them are a big part of the problem.
At this point, China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but is being allowed to increase those emissions because it is classified as "developing" rather than "developed". And, the U. S. and Europe are being called upon to provide a trillion $, not "just" 300 billion $, to "help" "developing" nations (other than China). Even China sees the ridiculousness of the designations, and is voluntarily doing a bit more. because of the political backlash.
But, pouring money into governments of "developing" countries, many of which are terribly corrupt, is not really expected to create the changes needed, anyway. Unless the "developed" nations actually build the infrastructures in the "developing" countries, we cannot expect to achieve "climate success". And, even trying to do that is likely to get mired in corruption.
Meanwhile, the "politics" in the "developed" countries is unlikely to sustain a trillion $ give away while the quality of life in the "developed" countries declines, especially if there is a simultaneous improvement in the quality of life in the countries getting "assistance".
I still think the bottom line is that there are just too many people on the planet for us to all achieve the quality of life that is currently (or at least recently) being enjoyed by most of North America and Europe. With much of the world's population scrambling to achieve the same levels of comfort, there is a huge demand for more greenhouse gas emitting activities that is still going to overwhelm the minority trying to reduce them.
So, unless there is a better "technology" that can do both, and do it rapidly, we are not going to meet the "climate change" objectives.
Perhaps geothermal energy from deep bore holes is that technological breakthrough that we really need. I agree we should be pouring research $ into that. But, we seem to be pouring a lot of money into "fusion power" that does not seem to me to be a realistic hope for a quick transformation of our energy infrastructure. -
CreatedEvolution I have theories of space smoke that can be used to blanket the earth. But with added particles you probably get more temperature. Unless used to create drafts.Reply
I have theorized that the chemistry of the sun is pushing out matter at a fast rate. This includes smoke particles.
If we could find currents of this theoretical frozen tiny beyond microscopic smoke then perhaps we could introduce it to our atmosphere using plenty of EMFs or a giant bomb could actually be put to good use.
The bomb in the current of smoke would increase all heated particles and make more enter the atmosphere. I theorize it will increase global warming but you could raise water levels from byproducts of the sun. -
George² I don't know who said that crisis management should not bring financial profit. But it is a fact and the profits are huge. Because of this, there is also a constant organization of crises, they are constantly advertised and through their "management" from the national budgets to which we all contribute, huge money is moved into the personal accounts of the organizers and accomplices in the crises, billionaires, politicians, scientists, media owners. Climate warming is natural process. Humanity is not able to influence it with good control*. To manage the climate of an entire planet, progress on the Kardashev scale is required, which we may reach in 100 years, or we may need more time.Reply
*Good control requires very high-quality and extensive knowledge of climate processes and much more reliable and accurate climate mathematics. We cannot make a 100% accurate regional forecast even a day ahead, despite all the means of observation, including from space, despite all the accumulated experience and the provided computing power. -
CreatedEvolution As much as we don’t think a single grain of sand is much. We would have no beaches with 0. I’ve heard rumors of rain machines and I’ve also read hydrogen bombs create rain.Reply
Nuclear radiation set aside. We know these booms make rain. So could we place a non radioactive bomb strategically to make it rain from space where much radioactive active particles already exist.
I know it’s crazy but I’d agree we might see weather technology develop in the next 100 years. -
HobartStinsonian When has anyone explained who studied the potentially hundreds, no thousands, of possible causes for Earth’s climate to change? Who has ever explained how their scientific evaluation had concluded that of those, human activity is the only culprit. NOAA once stated on their website (decades ago) that in Earth’s carbon cycle between air/ atmosphere/ ocean and rock, that human activity accounts for about 4% of carbon entering the atmosphere. But they confidently stated that was enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into a steady centuries long rise in CO2. Who concludes that and how? Why during the COVID shutdown didn’t atmospheric CO2 decline? I don’t understand the lack of skepticism. That is a foundation of science: ask questions, and defend your conclusions. If you can.Reply -
COLGeek
Take a look here.HobartStinsonian said:When has anyone explained who studied the potentially hundreds, no thousands, of possible causes for Earth’s climate to change? Who has ever explained how their scientific evaluation had concluded that of those, human activity is the only culprit. NOAA once stated on their website (decades ago) that in Earth’s carbon cycle between air/ atmosphere/ ocean and rock, that human activity accounts for about 4% of carbon entering the atmosphere. But they confidently stated that was enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into a steady centuries long rise in CO2. Who concludes that and how? Why during the COVID shutdown didn’t atmospheric CO2 decline? I don’t understand the lack of skepticism. That is a foundation of science: ask questions, and defend your conclusions. If you can.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8819204/ -
Unclear Engineer COLGeek, Is that the link you intended? It addresses NO2, SO2, CO, and PM pollutants, but not CO2. It is more related to human health than climate effects.Reply -
COLGeek
I did mean that one. Just one of several studies/sources documenting overall impacts. While CO2 gets a lot of attention, it isn't the only thing humans dump into the atmosphere.Unclear Engineer said:COLGeek, Is that the link you intended? It addresses NO2, SO2, CO, and PM pollutants, but not CO2. It is more related to human health than climate effects.
A simple search, for those actually interested in a balanced view, will find multiple sources regarding improved air quality during COVID (and ever farther back to 9/11 that looked at impacts of nearly no air travel for a while).
Facts/science and political opinions/rhetoric obviously don't agree. That is truly sad.
Last, no amount of fact finding will convince some. So, I don't feel it necessary to provide exhaustive responses. If someone gets interested enough in a topic AND wants to learn more, they can do so easily.
Happy New Year. This year starting rough already. -
Unclear Engineer But HobartStinsonian's post was about accounting for CO2 changing the climate with greenhouse effects, and he merely mentioned that the COVID shutdowns as possible changes in the CO2 emission rate that should be investigated along with many other sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon.Reply
The atmospheric temperatures do not respond rapidly to changes in human CO2 emissions for 2 reasons. One is that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is pretty long, so the net effect of a particular emission episode lasts for a long time and is cumulative. The other reason is that there is already a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than we emit in a year. At 422.17 ppm atmospheric concentration, that is about 3300 gigatons of CO2 currently in the air. ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere ) Estimated human emissions in 2023 were 37.4 Gigatons of CO2. (See https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/emissions-grew-in-2023-but-clean-energy-is-limiting-the-growth ). But, CO2 is also coming from other sources and being removed from the atmosphere by other processes, including absorption by the oceans and photosynthesis on land.
So, the real question in HobartStinsonian's post is related to the dynamic balance of the total set of in and out processes, both human caused and natural. He is asking if that has been modeled correctly.
My guess is probably not, but probably well enough to demonstrate that humans are having some effect. I don't think we have enough modeling capability to show what the natural CO2 shifts would be without humans. We do see shifts during previous interglacial periods, but their timing is not perfectly clear, and sometimes it looks like the CO2 causes warming and sometimes it looks like the warming caused increased CO2. Actually, I think that both are working at the same time, and there is a shifting balance in the net result that is hard to model in enough detail with current tools and data.
I think it is clear that human emissions of CO2 (and methane) does contribute to creating a net warming effect. But, I don't think it is clear that we would not be seeing any warming or any increases in atmospheric CO2 at this point if humans were not emitting any.