Get ready for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn
by Naharnet Newsdesk 28 May 2025, 16:29
Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world's top weather agencies forecast.
There's an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it's even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office.
"Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stronger precipitation, droughts," said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn't part of the calculations but said they made sense. "So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost."
With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused climate change "we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events (particularly heat waves but also droughts, floods, fires and human-reinforced hurricanes/typhoons)," emailed Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not part of the research.
And for the first time there's a chance — albeit slight — that before the end of the decade, the world's annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said.
There's an 86% chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70% chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured.
The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centers of scientists.
Ten years ago, the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance — about 1% — that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical 1.5 degree threshold and then it happened last year. This year, a 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner, something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called "shocking."
"It's not something anyone wants to see, but that's what the science is telling us," Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement.
Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement's threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated.
"With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape," said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter.
Ice in the Arctic — which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world — will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said.
What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from an El Nino, which adds warming to the globe, the planet doesn't go back down much, if at all.
"Record temperatures immediately become the new normal," said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.
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Nahar Net
2 days ago
- Nahar Net
Get ready for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn
by Naharnet Newsdesk 28 May 2025, 16:29 Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world's top weather agencies forecast. There's an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it's even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office. "Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stronger precipitation, droughts," said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn't part of the calculations but said they made sense. "So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost." With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused climate change "we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events (particularly heat waves but also droughts, floods, fires and human-reinforced hurricanes/typhoons)," emailed Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not part of the research. And for the first time there's a chance — albeit slight — that before the end of the decade, the world's annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said. There's an 86% chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70% chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured. The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centers of scientists. Ten years ago, the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance — about 1% — that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical 1.5 degree threshold and then it happened last year. This year, a 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner, something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called "shocking." "It's not something anyone wants to see, but that's what the science is telling us," Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement. Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement's threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated. "With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape," said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter. Ice in the Arctic — which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world — will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said. What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from an El Nino, which adds warming to the globe, the planet doesn't go back down much, if at all. "Record temperatures immediately become the new normal," said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.
Nahar Net
22-05-2025
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Clownfish shrink their bodies to survive ocean heat waves
by Naharnet Newsdesk 22 May 2025, 14:37 To survive warming oceans, clownfish cope by shrinking in size. Scientists observed that some of the orange-striped fish shrank their bodies during a heat wave off the coast of Papa New Guinea. Fish that slimmed were more likely to survive. Heat waves are becoming more common and intense underwater due to climate change. Warmer water temperatures can bleach sea anemones that clownfish call home, forcing them to adapt to stay alive. Scientists monitored and measured 134 colorful clownfish in Kimbe Bay during an intense heat wave in 2023 that's still bleaching corals worldwide. They found that 101 clownfish decreased in length on one or more occasions from heat stress. "We were really shocked at first when we saw that they were shrinking at all," said study author Morgan Bennett-Smith with Boston University. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Though scientists don't yet know how clownfish shrink, one idea is that they could be reabsorbing their own bone matter. It's possible the smaller stature may help the clownfish save energy during a stressful scorch since smaller fish need less food. Certain clownfish breeding pairs also synced their shrink to boost their survival odds. The females adjusted their size to stay bigger than their partners, keeping the female-dominated social hierarchy intact, researchers said. Other animals also decrease in size to beat the heat. Marine iguanas get smaller during El Niño events that usher warm waters into the Galapagos. But this coping strategy hadn't yet been spotted in coral reef fish until now. "This is another tool in the toolbox that fish are going to use to deal with a changing world," said Simon Thorrold, an ocean ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who was not involved with the new study. The tactic helps clownfish weather heat waves in the short-term, but it's not yet clear how the fish will fare if they have to keep it up in the years to come, Thorrold said. Researchers found the shrinking was temporary. Clownfish possessed the ability to "catch up" and grow back when their environment got less stressful, showing how living things are staying flexible to keep up with a warming world, said study author Melissa Versteeg with Newcastle University. "These natural systems really are under stress, but there's a capacity for incredible resilience," Versteeg said.
Nahar Net
06-05-2025
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As Trump pares back ocean protections, California weighs expanding them
by Naharnet Newsdesk 7 hours Strands of kelp glow in the dim morning light off California's Channel Islands as fish and sea lions weave through the golden fronds. It's a scene of remarkable abundance — the result of more than two decades of protection in one of the state's oldest marine reserves. But farther out in the Pacific, life in the vast Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument faces a very different future. The Trump administration has moved to reopen 500,000 square miles (about 1.3 million square kilometers) of previously protected waters there to commercial fishing, in a dramatic rollback of federal ocean protections. California, meanwhile, may be headed in the opposite direction. As it undertakes its first 10-year review of its marine protected area network, state officials, scientists, tribal leaders and environmental advocates are pushing not just to maintain protections but to expand them. "These areas are like our underwater Yellowstone," said Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, speaking aboard a dive boat heading to the Channel Islands. "It's important to protect that biological heritage, but it also creates an extremely lucrative tourism industry. People want to go see all that nature and wildlife in action." The state's marine protected areas have become magnets for scuba divers and snorkelers drawn by their rich life. Over time, these reserves allow fish populations to rebound and spill over into nearby waters – a long-term investment with large returns for fishermen, as McCauley sees it. Launched in 2003, the network now spans 124 distinct sections along the coast. Some areas are "no-take" zones where all fishing is prohibited, while others allow limited use. The network covers roughly 16% of state waters, with proposed expansions that would add 2%. The goal, under the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, was to create a science-based system to rebuild ecosystems after decades of overfishing and habitat loss. The Channel Islands were among the first sites established. About 20% of the waters surrounding the eight-island chain are now fully protected. But expansion proposals have sparked debate among fishermen. Some anglers would like the restrictions to be relaxed Blake Hermann, a fourth-generation commercial fisherman from Ventura County, grew up fishing around the Channel Islands, where he harpoons swordfish by hand. He supports keeping much of the marine protected network intact, but he argues that some closures go too far and has petitioned the state to allow limited fishing in three no-take zones around the islands. Protected areas can help nearshore species like sea bass and lobster recover, Hermann said, but offer little benefit to wide-ranging ocean-goers like swordfish and tuna that may pass only briefly through a protected zone during migration. He questions whether it makes sense to restrict selective, low-impact fishing methods in places where these migratory species are only temporary visitors and will likely be caught when they move into unrestricted waters. "These islands are the best thing on the planet," Hermann said. "We can still protect what makes sense to protect in the right areas, but you can also still give some access back too." 'We're really protecting ourselves' Others warn that reopening any part of the protected network could set a troubling precedent, especially as climate change disrupts ocean ecosystems. "When we protect the oceans, we're really protecting ourselves," said Sandy Aylesworth, director of the Pacific Initiative for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If the additional 2% is added, it will better prepare California's ocean for future stressors like climate change and new industrial uses of the ocean. So I see it as being a real benefit to all of the ocean users in California — including recreational and commercial fishermen." Final decisions from the review are expected early next year. "Marine protected areas are probably the most controversial thing that we work on, because you're essentially telling a group of individuals that they can't do what they've historically done in an area," said Craig Shuman, marine region manager at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Shuman said the fishing community has become particularly vocal in response to petitions to expand the MPA network. Many aren't asking for more access, he said, just for existing opportunities not to be taken away. "They're asking, 'If you take all the places we can fish, where do we go?'" he said. "That's the challenge: how to find the right balance between protection and access, especially in a state like California where we already have very strong fisheries management laws." Overall, he said, the data shows the network is working. "It's not consistent — each MPA is a little bit different — but more often than not, we're seeing the MPAs are working to achieve the goals of the Act." Trump administration moves to open up previously protected waters The president's executive order lifted fishing restrictions in waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles around a remote Pacific island chain — areas first protected by President George W. Bush in 2009 and expanded by President Barack Obama in 2014. Supporters said doing so would boost commercial fishing interests in Hawaii and American Samoa. Conservationists fear the impacts from fishing in an area that's home to coral reefs, sea turtles, whales and thousands of other species. "It makes it even more critical here at the state level that there is this expansion of protections to really balance out some of those rollbacks," said Molly Morse, senior manager at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. Back on the boat, still within the protected waters off Anacapa Island, a shimmering school of sardines and anchovies draws a frenzy of seabirds and dolphins. Humpback whales surge from the depths, mouths agape, swallowing fish by the gallon. Along the border of the protected area, a sport fishing boat drops its lines as a container ship rumbles past in the distance. "We've got the largest port in the United States. We've got offshore oil and gas. We've got fishing boats coming and going," McCauley said. "But still, in the middle of all that, we still have this wildness — a place where all the stakeholders who want value out of the ocean can find it."
