'Unprecedented' climate exposures for people born in 2020
Extreme climate events like intense heat waves and floods will be a regular feature in the lives of younger generations, according to new research that modeled different climate scenarios by birth cohorts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Old, inactive oil and gas wells emitting almost 7 times more methane than official estimates
Social Sharing Inactive and abandoned oil and gas wells in Canada are a much bigger climate problem than previously thought, emitting almost seven times more methane than the official estimates, according to a new study from researchers at McGill University. The potent greenhouse gas is responsible for a third of all global warming and traps 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. But Canada's efforts to curb methane emissions have focused on active oil and gas sites, rather than those that stopped operating decades ago. The McGill study says methane emissions from these wells is about 230 kilotonnes yearly, as opposed to the government's current estimate of 34 kilotonnes. "Bringing attention to this topic — hopefully that will lead to more emissions reductions, and more development of smart mitigation strategies," said Mary Kang, associate professor of civil engineering at McGill University, who led the research. There are about 470,000 non-producing wells across Canada, most in oil-rich Alberta but also in B.C., Alberta and Ontario. Regulators use varying terminology for these wells, like "inactive" or "abandoned," but they're generally wells that have ceased production and may require work to plug them and restore the area. About 68 per cent have been plugged in some way by their owners, while the rest are either unplugged or their status is unknown. The study estimated that about 50,000 wells in Canada are undocumented, most in Ontario. WATCH | Wells leaking pollutants: Methane from abandoned oil wells worse than initially recorded 14 hours ago Duration 2:02 The McGill researchers also found that a relatively small proportion of high-emitting wells were responsible for a large portion of the leaks. They suggest targeting those wells, along with repurposing wells for other uses, like producing geothermal energy, which would encourage monitoring them long-term and preventing methane leaks that pop up. "For example, one well can emit as much as 100 wells combined," said Jade Boutot, a PhD student in civil engineering who was a co-author on the study. "When we look at the characteristics of the wells, for example, their location or whether they're plugged or unplugged, we can identify the wells that are at a higher risk of emitting methane. And then we can prioritize them for remediation." Environment and Climate Change Canada says it is reviewing the research and may include it while reviewing how it estimates methane emissions. The estimates are included in the government's annual greenhouse gas emissions report, which comes out around May. Living close to the problem Southwestern Ontario feels a long way from the centre of the oil industry in Western Canada, but it has a long history in oil and gas production. The first commercial oil well in North America started operating in 1858 in Oil Springs, Ont. The industry has left over 23,000 known legacy wells scattered throughout the region. "A lot of the people that were exploiting those wells were actually small landowners and they drilled thousands and thousands of wells that were never recorded," said Stewart Hamilton, a geochemist and hydrogeologist who works for Montrose Environmental Group, a firm that works on well remediations. He says he was not surprised at the McGill researchers' findings, given what he has seen with abandoned wells in Ontario that are leaking into groundwater and the surrounding environment, and causing headaches for local residents. One such problematic well is in Norfolk County, Ont., about 15 kilometres from the shores of Lake Erie. "Some days I can't even go outside without getting burning eyes and a sore throat," said Paul Jongerden, whose property is along a creek that the well leaks into. The problem for local residents is hydrogen sulfide, a foul-smelling gas that is ruining their quality of life and causing headaches and other health issues. The well is also leaking methane. The county has over 2,600 abandoned gas wells, according to recent reports, notes Brian Craig, who also lives near the leaking well. "This is a very serious issue," he said. "Many of them have been plugged, but there are many that are still leaking. "And if you add up all the methane that's emanating from these gas wells, it is having a serious impact on climate change." Fixing leaking wells usually falls to landowners, who complain this puts a huge burden on them, especially when they may not even know how many legacy wells are on their land. This particular well is on land owned by the county, and the local government has been trying to remediate it with help from the province. "These wells, particularly the wells that have got some underground pressure, they don't respect municipal boundaries and they don't respect boundaries in regards to private property and public property," said Al Meneses, chief administrative officer of Norfolk County. "What we do is try to get the province to understand that this is a regionwide problem and requires a regionwide solution." Ontario's Abandoned Works Program provides funding to landowners who need to plug wells, and in 2023, the province kicked in $23.6 million to develop a provincewide strategy for dealing with old wells. It included direct funding for counties including Norfolk and a doubling of the Abandoned Works Program's budget to $6 million annually. Other provinces have similar programs. Alberta's Orphan Well Association helps clean up wells whose operators have gone out of business. It raises money through a levy on the oil and gas industry, although critics have warned the levy is not enough to support the work. In 2020, the federal government announced $1.7 billion to help clean up abandoned wells in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. "I'm glad that finally, I think this is being taken seriously," Stewart said. "It'll take a long time. But it's not outside our technical capabilities. We can do it." Kang has been researching non-producing wells for over a decade. A landmark study she did in 2014 on non-producing wells in Pennsylvania led the U.S. and Canada to start reporting methane emissions from their non-producing wells in their official yearly estimates.
CBC
4 hours ago
- CBC
After the puzzling warmth of Earth in 2023 and 2024, what could 2025 have in store?
After 12 consecutive months with temperatures 1.5 C above the 1850-1900 average, Earth's temperature has now fallen — thanks in part to the end of a natural cycle. According to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit climate analysis organization, the global average temperature was 1.33 C above the pre-industrial average in the month of May, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) found that the monthly average was 1.40 C above the pre-industrial average. (Climate agencies around the world use different methods to analyze global temperatures, hence the difference). While that may seem like good news, the fact is that 2025 is still on track to be one of the top three warmest years on record, according to Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth. "With El Niño being firmly over, it is very unlikely at this point that 2025 is going to set a new record, but I still think it's the odds-on favourite to be the second-warmest on record, and it is virtually certain to be a top three warmest year," Hausfather said. El Niño, a natural, cyclical warming in a region of the Pacific Ocean that, coupled with the atmosphere, can cause global temperatures to rise, began in the middle of 2023 and then peaked in 2024, which could account for some of the record warmth that puzzled climate scientists. What was particularly interesting about the month of May is that land surface temperatures dropped quite a bit compared to the months prior. However, it was still the second warmest on record, after 2024. Hausfather said the sharp drop could have been some "internal variability" that had kept the land surface temperatures elevated and that perhaps last month was a result of the end of that variability. An important thing to also keep in mind when it comes to what we can expect in terms of 2025 making the record books, winter is when we see the greatest temperature anomalies, Hausfather said. So that could push 2025 even higher than what we're seeing now. On the road to warming trend of 1.5 C Ocean temperatures have decreased in part due the end of El Niño, but remain near record highs. In May, the average ocean temperatures were 0.99 C above the 1850-1900 average, according to Berkeley Earth. "At the moment, we are seeing, or we have just seen, a significant ocean heat wave in the North Atlantic," said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). "[Ocean temperatures are] cooler than last year and the previous one, but it's warmer than any other years we have in the record. So this is one of these things where it depends [whether] we like to see the glass half full or half empty. It's still a very warm ocean." Though Earth did hit a 12-month average of 1.5 C, that doesn't necessarily mean failure on the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below a threshold of 1.5 C. That would have to happen over a longer period, though there is no set timeframe set out in the agreement. Climate is looked at over long periods, typically spanning 20 or 30 years. Carbon budget running out However, a study published on Wednesday in the journal Earth System Science Data, found that — if emissions continue at 2024 rates — we have only three years until we exhaust our carbon budget to keep warming below that 1.5 C threshold. "Record-high greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly narrowing the chance of limiting warming to 1.5 C," Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and co-author of the report, said in a statement. "The window to stay within 1.5°C is rapidly closing. Global warming is already affecting the lives of billions of people around the world." Though the that threshold may be breached, climate scientists like to stress that every tenth of a degree matters. But to keep warming below 2 C — the threshold initially set by the Paris Agreement — there needs to be a concerted effort to drastically cut CO2 emissions, as Antonio Gutteres, secretary-general of the United Nations, has continually stressed. Buontempo said that he's hopeful that the tools we have today will at least help us deal with dealing with the outcomes of rising temperatures. "I'm an optimist. I've always been an optimist, and my feeling is that, you know, there are plenty of positives in this terrible situation, including the fact that we never had so much information about our planet," Buontempo said.
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
Scientists warn that greenhouse gas accumulation is accelerating and more extreme weather will come
WASHINGTON — Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable, according to a study to be released Thursday. The report predicts that society will have emitted enough carbon dioxide by early 2028 that crossing an important long-term temperature boundary will be more likely than not. The scientists calculate that by that point there will be enough of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like gasoline, oil and coal, is sooner than the same group of 60 international scientists calculated in a study last year. 'Things aren't just getting worse. They're getting worse faster,' said study co-author Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the climate monitoring group Berkeley Earth. 'We're actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there's a silver lining. I don't think there really is one in this one.' That 1.5 goal, first set in the 2015 Paris agreement, has been a cornerstone of international efforts to curb worsening climate change. Scientists say crossing that limit would mean worse heat waves and droughts, bigger storms and sea-level rise that could imperil small island nations. Over the last 150 years, scientists have established a direct correlation between the release of certain levels of carbon dioxide, along with other greenhouse gases like methane, and specific increases in global temperatures. In Thursday's Indicators of Global Climate Change report, researchers calculated that society can spew only 143 billion more tons (130 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide before the 1.5 limit becomes technically inevitable. The world is producing 46 billion tons (42 billion metric tons) a year, so that inevitability should hit around February 2028 because the report is measured from the start of this year, the scientists wrote. The world now stands at about 1.24 degrees Celsius (2.23 degrees Fahrenheit) of long-term warming since preindustrial times, the report said. Earth's energy imbalance The report, which was published in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows that the rate of human-caused warming per decade has increased to nearly half a degree (0.27 degrees Celsius) per decade, Hausfather said. And the imbalance between the heat Earth absorbs from the sun and the amount it radiates out to space, a key climate change signal, is accelerating, the report said. 'It's quite a depressing picture unfortunately, where if you look across the indicators, we find that records are really being broken everywhere,' said lead author Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds in England. 'I can't conceive of a situation where we can really avoid passing 1.5 degrees of very long-term temperature change.' The increase in emissions from fossil-fuel burning is the main driver. But reduced particle pollution, which includes soot and smog, is another factor because those particles had a cooling effect that masked even more warming from appearing, scientists said. Changes in clouds also factor in. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25% higher than it was just a decade or so ago, Forster said. Earth's energy imbalance 'is the most important measure of the amount of heat being trapped in the system,' Hausfather said. Earth keeps absorbing more and more heat than it releases. 'It is very clearly accelerating. It's worrisome,' he said. Crossing the temperature limit The planet temporarily passed the key 1.5 limit last year. The world hit 1.52 degrees Celsius (2.74 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since preindustrial times for an entire year in 2024, but the Paris threshold is meant to be measured over a longer period, usually considered 20 years. Still, the globe could reach that long-term threshold in the next few years even if individual years haven't consistently hit that mark, because of how the Earth's carbon cycle works. That 1.5 is 'a clear limit, a political limit for which countries have decided that beyond which the impact of climate change would be unacceptable to their societies,' said study co-author Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. The mark is so important because once it is crossed, many small island nations could eventually disappear because of sea level rise, and scientific evidence shows that the impacts become particularly extreme beyond that level, especially hurting poor and vulnerable populations, he said. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded. Crossing the threshold 'means increasingly more frequent and severe climate extremes of the type we are now seeing all too often in the U.S. and around the world — unprecedented heat waves, extreme hot drought, extreme rainfall events, and bigger storms,' said University of Michigan environment school dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn't part of the study. Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist who wasn't part of the study, said the 1.5 goal was aspirational and not realistic, so people shouldn't focus on that particular threshold. 'Missing it does not mean the end of the world,' Dessler said in an email, though he agreed that 'each tenth of a degree of warming will bring increasingly worse impacts.' Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press
