Latest news with #IndicatorsofGlobalClimateChange
The Advertiser
6 hours ago
- Science
- The Advertiser
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. 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.
Perth Now
9 hours ago
- Science
- 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.
San Francisco Chronicle
9 hours ago
- Science
- San Francisco Chronicle
Scientists warn that greenhouse gas accumulation is accelerating and more extreme weather will come
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.' ___
Irish Independent
9 hours ago
- Science
- Irish Independent
Three years left before best chance of managing global temperature rise is lost
A team of scientists from 17 countries including Ireland have calculated the remaining 'carbon budget' and warn it is set to run out in 2028. Their warning comes with a slew of new data that shows all the measurements of climate change moving in the wrong direction. Sea level, for example, has risen twice as fast over the last six years compared to the previous century as warming oceans expand and ice caps melt more rapidly than before. The surge is revealed in a collaboration by 61 experts from 54 universities and institutes published today. They warn that the Earth's atmosphere can take only three more years of carbon and other greenhouse gases being pumped out at today's rate before hitting a critical stage. At that point, the accumulation of warming gases is expected to be beyond what would provide a 50pc chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C. Preventing temperature rise exceeding 1.5C is the aim of the landmark Paris Agreement signed by almost all the world's nations in 2015. Technically, the agreement is not broken by breaching 1.5C because it refers to that level of temperature rise being sustained over several decades. However, the scientists behind the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative point out that the 1.5C mark was already exceeded in 2024 and, while this was a record-breaking year, the likelihood of it being repeated sooner and often is increasing all the time. The IGCC initiative was set up to provide annual updates on climate change in between publication of the flagship reports of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which are produced only every six or seven years. ADVERTISEMENT Its latest report shows rapid changes since the last report was published in 2021. Annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common and long-lasting greenhouse gas, rose by 1.3pc. The amount of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere increased by 3.1pc while concentration of methane, which has a shorter lifespan but greater short-term warming impact, increased by 3.4pc. Average temperature rise grew by 13.8pc and the remaining carbon budget dwindled by 74pc – from 500 billion tonnes of CO2 to 130 billion tonnes at the start of 2025. Sea levels rose by 26mm, counting from 2019, giving an average increase of 4.3mm per year compared to an average of 1.8mm per year over the previous 120 years. 'This seemingly small number is having an outsized impact on low-lying coastal areas, making storm surges more damaging and causing more coastal erosion,' said Dr Aimee Slangen, of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. 'The concerning part is that we know that sea level rise in response to climate change is relatively slow, which means that we have already locked in further increases in the coming years and decades.'
The Advertiser
9 hours ago
- Science
- The Advertiser
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.
