Latest news with #PotsdamInstituteforClimateImpactResearch
Boston Globe
28-05-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Five-year forecast sees more killer heat, fires, and temperature records
Advertisement 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. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.
The Hindu
16-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Atmospheric memory: How do monsoons ‘remember' the past?
How do monsoons really work? What makes them plentiful some years, but vanish completely in others, causing drought-like conditions? Climate scientists have been seeking answers to these questions for a long time. Now a research paper has come up with an intriguing explanatory concept: atmospheric memory. The study was conducted by two scientists -- Anja Katzenberger & Anders Levermann -- from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Titled 'Monsoon Hysteresis reveals Atmospheric Memory', it was published recently in the scientific journal PNAS. The study showed, for the first time, that the atmosphere can store moisture over extended periods, creating a physical memory effect. In other words,the atmosphere can 'remember' its previous state by storing physical information in the form of water vapour.' The paper also talks about how there is a tipping point in the system that determines monsoon rainfall. So, how does this discovery change our understanding of how monsoons work? What are its practical applications? What are the risks posed to this system by things like pollution and global warming? Guest: Anders Levermann, Professor of the Dynamics of the Climate System at the Institute for Physics and Astrophysics of the Potsdam University, Germany. Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu. Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. Listen to more In Focus podcasts:
L'Orient-Le Jour
08-05-2025
- Science
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Global temperatures remain above 1.5°C
Global temperatures remained at historically high levels in April, continuing a nearly two-year streak of unprecedented heat on the planet, which is stirring the scientific community regarding the pace of global warming. Globally, April 2025 is ranked the second warmest after April 2024, according to the European observatory Copernicus, which bases its data on billions of measurements from satellites, weather stations, and other tools. Last month extends an uninterrupted series of record or near-record temperatures that has lasted since July 2023, soon approaching two years. Since then, with one exception, every month has been at least 1.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial era average (1850-1900). Many scientists had anticipated that the 2023-2024 period — the two hottest years ever measured globally — would be followed by a respite when the warmer conditions of the El Nino phenomenon would fade. "With 2025, it should have settled down, but instead, we remain in this phase of accelerated warming," said Johan Rockström, director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "It seems that we are stuck here" and "what explains this is not entirely resolved, but it's a very worrying sign," he told AFP. The past two years "have been exceptional," Samantha Burgess from the European center operating Copernicus told AFP. "They remain within the range that climate models predicted for today, but we are at the top of the range." One explanation is that the La Nina phenomenon, the opposite of El Nino and synonymous with cooling influence, has turned out to be only "weak in intensity" since December, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and could already decline in the coming months. Almost 1.4°C already A group of about fifty renowned climatologists, led by Briton Piers Forster, estimate that the climate was already warmed by an average of 1.36°C in 2024. This is the conclusion of a preliminary version of their study that annually updates the key figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the climate experts mandated by the UN. Copernicus has a current estimate very close to that, at 1.39°C. The 1.5°C warming threshold, the most ambitious of the Paris Agreement, is on the verge of being reached in a stabilized way, calculated over several decades, many scientists estimate. Copernicus believes that this could be the case by 2029. "That's in four years. The reality is that we are going to exceed 1.5°C," says Samantha Burgess. "At the current pace, the 1.5°C will be surpassed before 2030," also estimates Julien Cattiaux, a climatologist at the CNRS contacted by AFP. "It is said that every tenth of a degree counts," as it multiplies droughts, heatwaves, and other weather catastrophes "but currently, they are happening fast," the scientist warns. But "now, what we must try to do, is to have global warming as close as possible" to the initial target because "it's not the same if we target a climate warmed by 2°C at the end of the century or by 4°C," he recalls. That the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — is responsible for the bulk of the warming is not debated among climatologists. But discussions and studies are multiplying to quantify the climatic influence of changes in clouds, a decrease in air pollution, or the Earth's ability to store carbon in natural sinks such as forests and oceans. Annual records of global temperatures go back to 1850. But ice cores, ocean floor sediments, and other "climate archives" establish that the current climate is unprecedented for at least 120,000 years.
France 24
08-05-2025
- Science
- France 24
Global temperatures stuck at near-record highs in April: EU monitor
The extraordinary heat spell was expected to subside as warmer El Nino conditions faded last year, but temperatures have stubbornly remained at record or near-record levels well into this year. "And then comes 2025, when we should be settling back, and instead we are remaining at this accelerated step-change in warming," said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "And we seem to be stuck there. What this is caused (by) -- what is explaining it -- is not entirely resolved, but it's a very worrying sign," he told AFP. In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations. All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely. Missed target Many scientists believe this target is no longer attainable and will be crossed in a matter of years. A large study by dozens of pre-eminent climate scientists, which has not yet been peer reviewed, recently concluded that global warming reached 1.36C in 2024. Copernicus puts the current figure at 1.39C and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid 2029 or sooner based on the warming trend over the last 30 years. "Now it's in four years' time. The reality is we will exceed 1.5 degrees," said Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs Copernicus. "The critical thing is to then not latch onto two degrees, but to focus on 1.51," the climate scientist told AFP. Julien Cattiaux, a climate scientist at the French research institute CNRS, said 1.5C "would be beaten before 2030" but that was not a reason to give up. "It's true that the figures we're giving are alarming: the current rate of warming is high. They say every 10th of a degree counts, but right now, they're passing quickly," he told AFP. "Despite everything, we mustn't let that hinder action." 'Exceptional' Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense. But they are less certain about what else might have contributed to this persistent heat event. Experts think changes in global cloud patterns, airborne pollution and Earth's ability to store carbon in natural sinks like forests and oceans, could be factors also contributing to the planet overheating. The surge pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record, with 2025 tipped to be third. "The last two years... have been exceptional," said Burgess. "They're still within the boundary -- or the envelope -- of what climate models predicted we could be in right now. But we're at the upper end of that envelope." She said that "the current rate of warming has accelerated but whether that's true over the long term, I'm not comfortable saying that", adding that more data was needed. Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data -- such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons -- allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further into the past. Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Earth Day marks the chance to help save the planet. The environment was already on the edge before Trump took office
Tuesday marks the 55th anniversary of the United States' Earth Day movement. As the world continues to get hotter and hotter, each passing day is but another that could be used to combat the terrifying and existential threat of human-caused climate change. Climate change is expected to make raging wildfires more frequent, flash floods more severe, hurricanes stronger, droughts more persistent,and disproportionately affect Americans based on their socioeconomic status and location. The migration away from coasts has already begun, with 3.2 million people believed to have moved in an effort to escape flooding rainfall over the past two decades. Even before the potentially devastating environmental policy implemented by the Trump administration, scientists had warned that the planet's biggest lines of defense against the climate crisis – our natural carbon sinks that support Earth's life-sustaining carbon cycle – could be starting to fail. 'Carbon sinks' are reservoirs that absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release. Earth's oceans and forests are the biggest carbon sinks, and levels are the highest ever. The greenhouse gas is the main culprit for Earth's warming thanks to emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Because humans emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural sinks can remove, the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continuously ticks upward. Due to the high levels of carbon, forests are reportedly barely taking any in themselves. Ocean carbon storage is weakening. 'We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land … but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,' Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said last September. 'Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,' he said. The U.S. is one of the biggest culprits for individual greenhouse gas emissions, and it is second only to China. While former President Joe Biden set ambitious climate goals to curb emissions – basically the only recourse to reverse course, according to climate scientists – the Trump administration has ignored and fired climate scientists and experts across fields. New Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has deemed climate change a 'religion,' ignoring the science and state of the planet in favor of President Donald Trump's energy mandates. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is doing the same, moving to open land for more drilling and mining despite proven harms and the environmental costs. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says she plans to expand domestic timber production, opening national forests to logging. Deforestation releases large amounts of carbon and can also affect the ability to soak up greenhouse gases. After 'driving a dagger' into regulations to prevent pollution, including a landmark climate finding, Zeldin wished Americans a 'Happy Earth Day.' 'From the mountains to the plains, the rivers and the oceans, across our nation's vast landscape, we all have a stake in our environment,' he wrote, adding that the administration remains 'committed to clean air, land and water for all Americans. We can and we will accomplish this goal.' But, the realities of the planet's climate peril cannot and will not be ignored. There are no boundaries to climate change. No country will be left alone. 'Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,' Dr. Rick Spinrad, the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement last summer. 'We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to reduce fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.'
