Clue to record-breaking temperatures in clearer skies
Disappearing clouds are contributing to faster global warming and tumbling temperature records.
Scientists have seen a decline of somewhere between 1.5 per cent and three per cent in the world's storm cloud zones each decade over the past 24 years.
The shrinking coverage, observed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration-led team, results in less sunlight reflected back into space, allowing more in to boost global warming.
Overall clearer skies, a trend driven by evolving wind patterns, the expanding tropics and other shifts linked to climate change, is now thought to be the largest contributor to the planet's higher absorption of solar radiation.
Christian Jakob, a co-author of the study and director at the Monash-led Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, said the major heating consequences of shrinking cloud cover was now evident.
"It's an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the extraordinary recent warming we observed, and a wake-up call for urgent climate action," Professor Jakob said.
Last year was the hottest on record, the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, clocking in at about 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial era average.
A single year above 1.5C is not enough to breach the Paris Agreement, however, as the global pact's goals are based on long-term averages measured over decades.
The UN weather agency expects temperatures to keep rising, with a 70 per cent chance the 2025-2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5C.
Unprecedented ocean heating has been felt particularly acutely in the waters surrounding Australia, leading to coral bleaching, fish kills and algal blooms.
The elevated rate of warming is due to global greenhouse gas emissions holding at all-time highs, largely due to burning fossil fuels and deforestation, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study released on Thursday.
If current emissions trends continue, the report prepared by dozens of scientists from around the world says there will be just over three years left in the carbon budget to achieve 1.5C of heating.
Policymakers and experts have gathered in Germany for a mid-year convention ahead of the main UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil scheduled for November.
Disappearing clouds are contributing to faster global warming and tumbling temperature records.
Scientists have seen a decline of somewhere between 1.5 per cent and three per cent in the world's storm cloud zones each decade over the past 24 years.
The shrinking coverage, observed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration-led team, results in less sunlight reflected back into space, allowing more in to boost global warming.
Overall clearer skies, a trend driven by evolving wind patterns, the expanding tropics and other shifts linked to climate change, is now thought to be the largest contributor to the planet's higher absorption of solar radiation.
Christian Jakob, a co-author of the study and director at the Monash-led Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, said the major heating consequences of shrinking cloud cover was now evident.
"It's an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the extraordinary recent warming we observed, and a wake-up call for urgent climate action," Professor Jakob said.
Last year was the hottest on record, the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, clocking in at about 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial era average.
A single year above 1.5C is not enough to breach the Paris Agreement, however, as the global pact's goals are based on long-term averages measured over decades.
The UN weather agency expects temperatures to keep rising, with a 70 per cent chance the 2025-2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5C.
Unprecedented ocean heating has been felt particularly acutely in the waters surrounding Australia, leading to coral bleaching, fish kills and algal blooms.
The elevated rate of warming is due to global greenhouse gas emissions holding at all-time highs, largely due to burning fossil fuels and deforestation, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study released on Thursday.
If current emissions trends continue, the report prepared by dozens of scientists from around the world says there will be just over three years left in the carbon budget to achieve 1.5C of heating.
Policymakers and experts have gathered in Germany for a mid-year convention ahead of the main UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil scheduled for November.
Disappearing clouds are contributing to faster global warming and tumbling temperature records.
Scientists have seen a decline of somewhere between 1.5 per cent and three per cent in the world's storm cloud zones each decade over the past 24 years.
The shrinking coverage, observed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration-led team, results in less sunlight reflected back into space, allowing more in to boost global warming.
Overall clearer skies, a trend driven by evolving wind patterns, the expanding tropics and other shifts linked to climate change, is now thought to be the largest contributor to the planet's higher absorption of solar radiation.
Christian Jakob, a co-author of the study and director at the Monash-led Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, said the major heating consequences of shrinking cloud cover was now evident.
"It's an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the extraordinary recent warming we observed, and a wake-up call for urgent climate action," Professor Jakob said.
Last year was the hottest on record, the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, clocking in at about 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial era average.
A single year above 1.5C is not enough to breach the Paris Agreement, however, as the global pact's goals are based on long-term averages measured over decades.
The UN weather agency expects temperatures to keep rising, with a 70 per cent chance the 2025-2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5C.
Unprecedented ocean heating has been felt particularly acutely in the waters surrounding Australia, leading to coral bleaching, fish kills and algal blooms.
The elevated rate of warming is due to global greenhouse gas emissions holding at all-time highs, largely due to burning fossil fuels and deforestation, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study released on Thursday.
If current emissions trends continue, the report prepared by dozens of scientists from around the world says there will be just over three years left in the carbon budget to achieve 1.5C of heating.
Policymakers and experts have gathered in Germany for a mid-year convention ahead of the main UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil scheduled for November.
Disappearing clouds are contributing to faster global warming and tumbling temperature records.
Scientists have seen a decline of somewhere between 1.5 per cent and three per cent in the world's storm cloud zones each decade over the past 24 years.
The shrinking coverage, observed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration-led team, results in less sunlight reflected back into space, allowing more in to boost global warming.
Overall clearer skies, a trend driven by evolving wind patterns, the expanding tropics and other shifts linked to climate change, is now thought to be the largest contributor to the planet's higher absorption of solar radiation.
Christian Jakob, a co-author of the study and director at the Monash-led Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, said the major heating consequences of shrinking cloud cover was now evident.
"It's an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the extraordinary recent warming we observed, and a wake-up call for urgent climate action," Professor Jakob said.
Last year was the hottest on record, the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, clocking in at about 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial era average.
A single year above 1.5C is not enough to breach the Paris Agreement, however, as the global pact's goals are based on long-term averages measured over decades.
The UN weather agency expects temperatures to keep rising, with a 70 per cent chance the 2025-2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5C.
Unprecedented ocean heating has been felt particularly acutely in the waters surrounding Australia, leading to coral bleaching, fish kills and algal blooms.
The elevated rate of warming is due to global greenhouse gas emissions holding at all-time highs, largely due to burning fossil fuels and deforestation, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study released on Thursday.
If current emissions trends continue, the report prepared by dozens of scientists from around the world says there will be just over three years left in the carbon budget to achieve 1.5C of heating.
Policymakers and experts have gathered in Germany for a mid-year convention ahead of the main UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil scheduled for November.
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Three years left to limit greenhouse gasses: study
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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." 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. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25 per cent 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. 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. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded. Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that breaching a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable. A new study predicts that by early 2028 there will be enough of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like petrol, 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 degree 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 a rise in sea-levels that could imperil small island nations. In Thursday's Indicators of Global Climate Change report, researchers calculated that society can spew only 130 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide before the 1.5 limit becomes technically inevitable. The world is producing 442 billion metric tons a year, so that inevitability should hit around February 2028, the scientists wrote. The report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows that the rate of human-caused warming per decade has increased to nearly 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." 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. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25 per cent 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. 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. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded. Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that breaching a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable. A new study predicts that by early 2028 there will be enough of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like petrol, 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 degree 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 a rise in sea-levels that could imperil small island nations. In Thursday's Indicators of Global Climate Change report, researchers calculated that society can spew only 130 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide before the 1.5 limit becomes technically inevitable. The world is producing 442 billion metric tons a year, so that inevitability should hit around February 2028, the scientists wrote. The report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows that the rate of human-caused warming per decade has increased to nearly 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." 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. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25 per cent 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. 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. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded. Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that breaching a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable. A new study predicts that by early 2028 there will be enough of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like petrol, 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 degree 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 a rise in sea-levels that could imperil small island nations. In Thursday's Indicators of Global Climate Change report, researchers calculated that society can spew only 130 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide before the 1.5 limit becomes technically inevitable. The world is producing 442 billion metric tons a year, so that inevitability should hit around February 2028, the scientists wrote. The report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows that the rate of human-caused warming per decade has increased to nearly 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." 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. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25 per cent 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. 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. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded.
News.com.au
14 hours ago
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Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
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Perth Now
15 hours ago
- Perth Now
Three years left to limit greenhouse gasses: study
Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that breaching a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable. A new study predicts that by early 2028 there will be enough of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like petrol, 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 degree 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 a rise in sea-levels that could imperil small island nations. In Thursday's Indicators of Global Climate Change report, researchers calculated that society can spew only 130 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide before the 1.5 limit becomes technically inevitable. The world is producing 442 billion metric tons a year, so that inevitability should hit around February 2028, the scientists wrote. The report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows that the rate of human-caused warming per decade has increased to nearly 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." 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. That all shows up in Earth's energy imbalance, which is now 25 per cent 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. 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. He added that efforts to curb emissions and the impacts of climate change must continue even if the 1.5 degree threshold is exceeded.
