Latest news with #Copernicus
eNCA
3 hours ago
- Science
- eNCA
Oceans feel the heat from human climate pollution
PARIS - Oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the warming caused by burning fossil fuels and shielded societies from the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But this crucial ally has developed alarming symptoms of stress -- heatwaves, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, falling oxygen levels and acidification caused by the uptake of excess carbon dioxide. These effects risk not just the health of the ocean but the entire planet. - Heating up - By absorbing more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, "oceans are warming faster and faster", said Angelique Melet, an oceanographer at the European Mercator Ocean monitor. The UN's IPCC climate expert panel has said the rate of ocean warming -- and therefore its heat uptake -- has more than doubled since 1993. Average sea surface temperatures reached new records in 2023 and 2024. Despite a respite at the start of 2025, temperatures remain at historic highs, according to data from the Europe Union's Copernicus climate monitor. The Mediterranean has set a new temperature record in each of the past three years and is one of the basins most affected, along with the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, said Thibault Guinaldo, of France's CEMS research centre. Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer-lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area, the IPCC said in its special oceans report. Warmer seas can make storms more violent, feeding them with heat and evaporated water. The heating water can also be devastating for species, especially corals and seagrass beds, which are unable to migrate. For corals, between 70 percent and 90 percent are expected to be lost this century if the world reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to pre-industrial levels. Scientists expect that threshold -- the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate deal -- to be breached in the early 2030s or even before. - Relentless rise - When a liquid or gas warms up, it expands and takes up more space. In the case of the oceans, this thermal expansion combines with the slow but irreversible melting of the world's ice caps and mountain glaciers to lift the world's seas. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades and if current trends continue, it will double again by 2100 to about one centimetre per year, according to recent research. Around 230 million people worldwide live less than a metre above sea level, vulnerable to increasing threats from floods and storms. "Ocean warming, like sea-level rise, has become an inescapable process on the scale of our lives, but also over several centuries," said Melet. "But if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the rate and magnitude of the damage, and gain time for adaptation". - More acidity, less oxygen - The ocean not only stores heat, it has also taken up 20 to 30 percent of all humans' carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s, according to the IPCC, causing the waters to become more acidic. Acidification weakens corals and makes it harder for shellfish and the skeletons of crustaceans and certain plankton to calcify. "Another key indicator is oxygen concentration, which is obviously important for marine life," said Melet. Oxygen loss is due to a complex set of causes, including those linked to warming waters. - Reduced sea ice - Combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover -- frozen ocean water that floats on the surface -- plunged to a record low in mid-February, more than a million square miles below the pre-2010 average. This becomes a vicious circle, with less sea ice allowing more solar energy to reach and warm the water, leading to more ice melting. This feeds the phenomenon of "polar amplification" that makes global warming faster and more intense at the poles, said Guinaldo.
Straits Times
3 hours ago
- Science
- Straits Times
Oceans feel the heat from human climate pollution
Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area. PHOTO: AFP PARIS - Oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the warming caused by burning fossil fuels and shielded societies from the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But this crucial ally has developed alarming symptoms of stress – heatwaves, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, falling oxygen levels and acidification caused by the uptake of excess carbon dioxide. These effects risk not just the health of the ocean but the entire planet. By absorbing more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, 'oceans are warming faster and faster', said Dr Angelique Melet, an oceanographer at the European Mercator Ocean monitor. The UN's IPCC climate expert panel has said the rate of ocean warming – and therefore its heat uptake – has more than doubled since 1993. Average sea surface temperatures reached new records in 2023 and 2024. Despite a respite at the start of 2025, temperatures remain at historic highs, according to data from the Europe Union's Copernicus climate monitor. The Mediterranean has set a new temperature record in each of the past three years and is one of the basins most affected, along with the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, said Mr Thibault Guinaldo, of France's CEMS research centre. Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area, the IPCC said in its special oceans report. Warmer seas can make storms more violent, feeding them with heat and evaporated water. The heating water can also be devastating for species, especially corals and seagrass beds, which are unable to migrate. For corals, between 70 per cent and 90 per cent are expected to be lost this century if the world reaches 1.5 deg C of warming compared to pre-industrial levels. Scientists expect that threshold – the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate deal – to be breached in the early 2030s or even before. Relentless rise When a liquid or gas warms up, it expands and takes up more space. In the case of the oceans, this thermal expansion combines with the slow but irreversible melting of the world's ice caps and mountain glaciers to lift the world's seas. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades and if current trends continue it will double again by 2100 to about 1cm per year, according to recent research. Around 230 million people worldwide live less than a metre above sea level, vulnerable to increasing threats from floods and storms. 'Ocean warming, like sea-level rise, has become an inescapable process on the scale of our lives, but also over several centuries,' said Dr Melet. 'But if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the rate and magnitude of the damage, and gain time for adaptation'. More acidity, less oxygen The ocean not only stores heat, it has also taken up 20 to 30 per cent of all humans' carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s, according to the IPCC, causing the waters to become more acidic. Acidification weakens corals and makes it harder for shellfish and the skeletons of crustaceans and certain plankton to calcify. 'Another key indicator is oxygen concentration, which is obviously important for marine life,' said Dr Melet. Oxygen loss is due to a complex set of causes including those linked to warming waters. Combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover – frozen ocean water that floats on the surface – plunged to a record low in mid-February, more than a million square miles below the pre-2010 average. This becomes a vicious circle, with less sea ice allowing more solar energy to reach and warm the water, leading to more ice melting. This feeds the phenomenon of 'polar amplification' that makes global warming faster and more intense at the poles, said Mr Guinaldo. AFP Find out more about climate change and how it could affect you on the ST microsite here.
France 24
3 hours ago
- Science
- France 24
Oceans feel the heat from human climate pollution
But this crucial ally has developed alarming symptoms of stress -- heatwaves, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, falling oxygen levels and acidification caused by the uptake of excess carbon dioxide. These effects risk not just the health of the ocean but the entire planet. Heating up By absorbing more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, "oceans are warming faster and faster", said Angelique Melet, an oceanographer at the European Mercator Ocean monitor. The UN's IPCC climate expert panel has said the rate of ocean warming -- and therefore its heat uptake -- has more than doubled since 1993. Average sea surface temperatures reached new records in 2023 and 2024. Despite a respite at the start of 2025, temperatures remain at historic highs, according to data from the Europe Union's Copernicus climate monitor. The Mediterranean has set a new temperature record in each of the past three years and is one of the basins most affected, along with the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, said Thibault Guinaldo, of France's CEMS research centre. Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area, the IPCC said in its special oceans report. Warmer seas can make storms more violent, feeding them with heat and evaporated water. The heating water can also be devastating for species, especially corals and seagrass beds, which are unable to migrate. For corals, between 70 percent and 90 percent are expected to be lost this century if the world reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to pre-industrial levels. Scientists expect that threshold -- the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate deal -- to be breached in the early 2030s or even before. Relentless rise When a liquid or gas warms up, it expands and takes up more space. In the case of the oceans, this thermal expansion combines with the slow but irreversible melting of the world's ice caps and mountain glaciers to lift the world's seas. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades and if current trends continue it will double again by 2100 to about one centimetre per year, according to recent research. Around 230 million people worldwide live less than a metre above sea level, vulnerable to increasing threats from floods and storms. "Ocean warming, like sea-level rise, has become an inescapable process on the scale of our lives, but also over several centuries," said Melet. "But if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the rate and magnitude of the damage, and gain time for adaptation". More acidity, less oxygen The ocean not only stores heat, it has also taken up 20 to 30 percent of all humans' carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s, according to the IPCC, causing the waters to become more acidic. Acidification weakens corals and makes it harder for shellfish and the skeletons of crustaceans and certain plankton to calcify. "Another key indicator is oxygen concentration, which is obviously important for marine life," said Melet. Oxygen loss is due to a complex set of causes including those linked to warming waters. Reduced sea ice Combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover -- frozen ocean water that floats on the surface -- plunged to a record low in mid-February, more than a million square miles below the pre-2010 average. This becomes a vicious circle, with less sea ice allowing more solar energy to reach and warm the water, leading to more ice melting. This feeds the phenomenon of "polar amplification" that makes global warming faster and more intense at the poles, said Guinaldo. © 2025 AFP
Mint
2 days ago
- Climate
- Mint
The world has already breached a dangerous level of warming, and India isn't prepared
NEW DELHI : Climate Change & You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your inbox. Dear reader, As I was writing this newsletter, Mumbai was drowning in record rains. The monsoon set in 8 days early this year, and according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), it is so early that it has already touched Mumbai. In fact, this year the monsoon came to Mumbai two weeks early, within 24 hours of its onset in Kerala. Mumbai certainly wasn't ready for it. In fact, by the morning of 26 May, one of the city's main stations in Colaba registered a record-breaking amount of rainfall—at 295mm—for the month of May. The previous record was set in 1918 – 107 years ago. We will soon know if climate change played a role in both the early onset of monsoon, as well as the rainfall in Mumbai. But what is already clear is that with rising atmospheric heat, monsoon rains will be more erratic and heavier as the years go by, simply because hotter air can hold more moisture, resulting in cloudbursts like the one in Mumbai on Sunday night. Speaking of climate anomalies, April 2025 was the second hottest April on record, after 2024. According to EU's climate monitoring service Copernicus, the global average temperature in April was 1.51 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. This made April the 21st straight month that was 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times, prompting some scientists to wonder if the world has already crossed the safety limit of 1.5 degrees of warming on a permanent basis. In fact, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization states that, by 2030, the world might experience at least one year that is 2 degrees hotter. If this is true, then this spells very bad news for the planet, as we will see below. STATE OF THE CLIMATE India's unbearable heat is rising The biggest climate threat in India continues to be heat, and the heat risk is rising. According to a recent study by the New Delhi-based climate policy thinktank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), 57% of India's districts are facing high to very high heat hazards. And 76% of India's population lives in these districts. The risk assessment study is based on 34 separate heat indicators from 734 districts across the country. It found that 417 districts are in the high risk zone, while another 201 faced moderate heat hazards. The top ten heat prone states and union territories include Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Uttar Pradesh. Also Read: Remembering the Climate Pope The report, titled How Extreme Heat Is Impacting India, highlighted two important dimensions of rising heat—an increase in very warm nights, and a rise in humid heat. Both of these factors amplify the effect of heat on the human body, and can lead to deadly overheating. According to the study, nearly 70% of the districts recorded an increase of over five extra warm nights per year between 2012 and 2022, as compared with 1982-2011. This is especially true of cities, where the heat island effect caused by highly built-up environments has been boosting warmer nights. For example, Mumbai recorded 15 additional 'very warm' summer nights in the past decade compared with the previous three decades. It is a similar situation for other cities like Jaipur and Chennai. With a 10% rise in relative humidity in north India, drier cities like New Delhi are seeing more humid heat, and high humidity plus heat is a deadly combination for the human body. THE NEWS IN BRIEF -In an incisive and well-researched article,LA Timesclimate reporter Sammy Roth lays out how Warren Buffet's investments for Berkshire have always skewed towards fossil fuels, helping drive planet-heating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. -All eyes are on Brazil, as the country gears up to host a pivotal global climate conference this November. In this interview with Hindustan Times, COP30 president designate André Aranha Correa do Lago lays out his priorities for the summit. -In this opinion piece, noted climate skeptic and contrarian Bjorn Lomberg questions if renewable energy really is cheaper than fossil fuels. CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER Sea-level rise threatening India's coasts I started this newsletter by noting that the world has already experienced 21 consecutive months of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating. Over the past decade, the average heating was of 1.2 degrees, but it seems like we are steadily moving into a much hotter world, sooner than many had predicted. In fact, it is clear that the goal to keep warming to under 1.5 degrees by 2100 is already unreachable, with many climate scientists predicting a catastrophic rise of 2.5-3 degrees of heat this century. This will have serious consequences. According to a major climate science study published earlier in May, sea-level rise may become unstoppable once the world hits 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming permanently. The study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, states that even at current levels of heating, the global sea-level is set to rise by 1cm a year by 2100. Given that we are on course to nearly 3 degrees of heating, this would be devastating for the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, leading to their collapse and a sea level rise of 12m. To put that into perspective, about 230 million people around the world's coastal areas live 1m above the current sea level, while 1 billion people live within 10m above sea level. In India, at least 63 million people (6% of the total population) live within 10m of seacoasts, the second highest in the world after China. For India, this number is projected to grow to 216 million people (10.3% of the total population) by 2060. With sea-level rise a given, there's an urgent need to adapt to this new reality. Which leads us to the next section. KNOW YOUR JARGON Climate Migration With India facing multiple climate threats, the one major change that will be triggered by rising climate hazards is migration. Whether it is sea-level rise, or other impacts like water stress, low crop yields, ecosystem loss and droughts, more and more Indians—mostly the poorest—will be forced to become climate refugees in their own country. According to a 2020 report by Climate Action Network South Asia, about 14 million Indians were forced to migrate due to climate change the absence of drastic climate mitigation measures, the report forecasts over 45 million migrants by 2050. This is a reality that India urgently needs to plan for. Also Read: A deep dive into India's climate crisis Among the many measures that experts urge countries to make is to enhance resilience among vulnerable communities, ensure just transition for agriculture workers, provide universal access to social protection measures, guarantee decent work by creating job opportunities and have a plan for safe, orderly and dignified movement during forced migrations. This will require a combination of international finance access, and generating local finances by progressive taxation of fossil fuel companies, and even international cooperation with our neighbouring countries. India is badly lagging in all of these areas, though some initial measures have been taken. Last year, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) set up a three-year project to increase resilience measures for climate vulnerable communities in Odisha and Telangana. This programme offers alternatives to migration, though it is also mandated to provide information for safe migration. But there is no actual policy addressing migration, apart from a private member's bill on climate migrants' protection and rehabilitation from an Assam Congress MP, which has been gathering dust since 2022. PRIME NUMBER 6.7 In 2024, the world lost 6.7 million hectares of primary forests, according to new data from the University of Maryland's GLAD Lab. The data, hosted on the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch platform, shows that this is nearly twice as much forest loss as in 2023. To put it another way, in 2024, the world lost forests at the rate of 18 football fields every minute. The data also revealed a disturbing new trend—loss due to fires. In 2024, nearly half the forest loss was due to fires, a huge jump from previous years, when agriculture was the primary driver of these losses. These fires emitted 4.1 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, four times more than emissions from all air travel in 2023. The loss of forest cover is a major driver of climate change, as without humid primary forests, land on the planet loses its capacity to store carbon. Forests are the most effective carbon capture and storage tech we know of. Between 2002 and 2024, the world lost 83 million hectares of primary forests, or 8.1% of forest cover. According to the Global Forest Watch data, India has lost 348 kilohectares (1kha=1,000 hectares) of primary forests in 2002-2024, about 15% of the country's entire tree cover. BOOK OF THE MONTH Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer The human urge to view nature as something that is passive is rather strong, which shows itself in the seemingly carefree way in which we plunder it for our gains. But as Jeff Vandermeer's award-winning weird fiction novel Annihilation shows, this couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, natural processes are gigantic and care not a whit for human claims of mastery. If we cannot adapt our ways to the laws of nature, we will be overwhelmed, subsumed and, well, annihilated. In the novel this process takes the form of a seemingly alien entity that creates a human free zone in south Florida, called Area X. As Area X expands, all human signs are obliterated, and people caught inside it are changed into inhuman beings, monstrous to us, but utterly harmonious with nature. The first of an acclaimed trilogy, Annihilation is a must-read for its imaginative and unsettling depiction of nature that doesn't care about human beings. So that's it for this edition of Climate Change & You, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next instalment. Also Read: When winter melts into summer
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Climate
- Irish Times
Ireland weather: Temperatures of above 20 degrees on the horizon
Temperatures of above 20 degrees are on the horizon, with Met Éireann expecting this from the second week of June. Forecaster Andrew Doran-Sherlock said the weather should remain unsettled, with no indication of a prolonged hot spell for the coming month. 'Our criteria for a heatwave is five days in a row of above 25 degrees. There is currently no indication of that,' Mr Doran-Sherlock said. 'There is some indication for above-average temperatures, starting from Monday 9th of June, that week. READ MORE 'We would be expecting temperatures could easily be up into the low twenties at times, but we're not seeing any prolonged period at the moment.' Earlier this month, Met Éireann forecast that temperatures in May, June and July are expected to be between a half a degree and a degree above normal. The long-term seasonal projection is based on satellite imagery from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is part of the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation programme. Looking into the coming week, Mr Doran-Sherlock said the weather forecast is 'mixed'. 'There will be some dry, bright spells, but the rain and showers are never too far away.'
