Latest news with #globalwarming
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Almost 40% of world's glaciers already doomed due to climate crisis
Almost 40% of glaciers in existence today are already doomed to melt due to climate-heating emissions from fossil fuels, a study has found. The loss will soar to 75% if global heating reaches the 2.7C rise for which the world is currently on track. The massive loss of glaciers would push up sea levels, endangering millions of people and driving mass migration, profoundly affecting the billions reliant on glaciers to regulate the water used to grow food, the researchers said. However, slashing carbon emissions and limiting heating to the internationally agreed 1.5C target would save half of glacier ice. That goal is looking increasingly out of reach as emissions continue to rise, but the scientists said that every tenth-of-a-degree rise that was avoided would save 2.7tn tonnes of ice. Glaciers in the western US and Canada were severely affected, the study found, with 75% already doomed to melt. Those in the high, cold mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges are more resilient but will still shrink significantly as global temperatures rise. Unlike previous studies, the research uses multiple models of glaciers to examine their fate well beyond the end of the century. About 20% of glaciers were already known to be doomed to melt by 2100, but the longer term view revealed that the total glacier loss that is already inevitable is 39%. As well as sea level rise, glacier loss will increase ice lake collapses that devastate downstream communities and the loss of wild ecosystems, while regions dependent on glacier tourism will also suffer. 'Our study makes it painfully clear that every fraction of a degree matters,' said Dr Harry Zekollari at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who co-led the research. 'The choices we make today will resonate for centuries, determining how much of our glaciers can be preserved.' Dr Lilian Schuster, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and co-lead author, said: 'Glaciers are good indicators of climate change because their retreat allows us to see with our own eyes how climate is changing. However, since they adjust over longer timescales, the situation for glaciers is actually far worse than visible in the mountains today.' Schuster added that it was 'not too late to act now, because this study shows every tenth of a degree less of global warming matters', potentially reducing the human suffering caused by glacier loss. 'We hope the message gives people some hope that we can still do something.' The baseline year for the analysis was 2020, but glaciers had already lost huge amounts of ice before this due to global heating over the last century. Quantifying this loss is difficult, however, due to the scarcity of historical data. 'Glaciers were way bigger [in 1850] than they are today,' said Zekollari. The study, published in the journal Science, used eight different glacier models, each calibrated using real-world observations. These estimated the ice loss of the world's 200,000 glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica under a range of global temperature scenarios, with that temperature remaining constant for thousands of years. The researchers acknowledged significant uncertainties in the models but said glaciers are certain to lose significant ice and this could be a lot higher than the average estimate. For example, the average prediction that 40% of glaciers are doomed at today's level of global heating could be as high as 55% in the worst case. The proportion of doomed glaciers varies widely around the world, with 80% of glaciers in the southern part of Arctic Canada already destined to melt, while only 5% of the glaciers in the western part of the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya mountain chain are currently consigned to history. The situation is grim at 2.7C of global heating: all but seven of the 19 major glacier regions of the world eventually lose at least 80% of glaciers, from central Europe to the eastern Himalaya chain. Glaciers would vanish from the Russian Arctic, the western US and Iceland. Related: Two-thirds of glacier ice in the Alps 'will melt by 2100' Glaciers currently contribute about a quarter of sea level rise and those already doomed will lead to another 11cm. If global heating reaches 2.7C, it will result in 23cm of sea level rise from glaciers alone. Limiting global heating to 1.5C limits reduces that to 14cm. Prof Andrew Shepherd, at Northumbria University in the UK, said the study brought together all of the glacier model projections into a single assessment. 'Glaciers are the most iconic example of the impacts of climate change, and they are in all corners of our planet,' he said. 'This study shows that glacier melting will continue for centuries, even if climate warming stops today, and that's a sobering thought – dramatic changes will take place in our lifetimes. Our mountain landscapes will be unrecognisable if we continue to burn fossil fuels as we are today.' Glaciers could seem remote, said Zekollari, but their loss mattered to everyone. 'Everything is connected. If you drive around in your car in the UK, you're emitting greenhouse gases and this helps melt a glacier maybe 10,000km away,' he said. 'The oceans then rise, so you'll have to have better coastal defences and that will cost a lot of taxpayers money.' The UN's High-Level International Conference on Glaciers' Preservation begins on Wednesday in Tajikistan, part of the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
2 billion people could face climate chaos if planet keeps warming
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Nearly 2 billion people could face wild disruptions in water availability if the planet continues to warm — and the change could be irreversible, new research suggests. Earth's average surface temperature is already about 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) higher than pre-industrial levels, and with 2024 the hottest year on record, the future forecast is not promising. The new study, published May 14 in the journal Earth's Future, looked at what would happen should global temperatures swell to 2.7 F (1.5 C), even for just a few decades. Such an increase in global temperature could have a permanent impact on the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a region near the equator where trade winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet, the study found. "These impacts that we quantify here will be there for the long term," said lead author Norman Steinert, senior climate researcher at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway. The ITCZ has a heavy influence on rainfall patterns, and the increase in global temperatures could cause it to shift south, changing the length and intensity of wet and dry seasons, especially in parts of Africa, the Amazon and Southeast Asia. Too much rain in some areas and not enough in others could have dire effects on agriculture, ecosystems and water availability for a major portion of the planet. Related: The decline of key Atlantic currents is underway, and it's been flooding parts of the US for 20 years Several factors affect this wide band of clouds, including the ocean's largest conveyor belt, a network of currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Emerging research suggests this conveyor belt is weakening, largely due to climate change. The researchers looked at two different scenarios run by eight different Earth System Models — powerful climate simulation tools. One "idealized" scenario analyzed how precipitation patterns might change if atmospheric CO2 increased at a rate of 1% per year for 140 years, then decreased at the same rate for another 140 years — it's a "clean," way to assess the impact of a rise and fall in global temperatures, if unrealistic, Steinert said. The researchers also looked at data showing a potentially more realistic scenario, where emissions increase until the year 2040, which is followed by aggressive mitigation efforts to bring the global temperature back down. The assumption is "that we won't be able or won't like to live in a warmer world, and would make actual efforts to bring temperatures down again at some point," Steinert told Live Science. Most of the projections resulted in little or no shift in the intertropical convergence zone. But in one of the idealized scenarios and two of the more realistic scenarios, the zone shifts significantly, causing potentially major upheaval to rain patterns for much of the world. Based on the number of models predicting different outcomes, the paper describes the ITCZ shift as 'unlikely.' But given the already weakened response of the AMOC and a time lag between when the climate warms and when the ocean heats up, the researchers argue a shift in the ITCZ may be more likely than the new study suggests. Central and West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia could face reduced rainfall, whereas northeast Brazil would be inundated. The timing and intensity of weather patterns could disrupt the lives of billions, as well as complicate agriculture that relies on consistent weather patterns. In total, 23% of the world population and more than 12% of the global land area could be impacted. The likelihood of this scenario playing out is "a low probability, but plausible outcome," Steinert said, and the models suggest the worst impacts would take decades, at a minimum, to play out. In multiple scenarios, the damage was permanent, at least at human-time scales. "It's an important study," Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the U.K., who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. RELATED STORIES —Climate change made April's catastrophic floods worse, report finds —Kids born today are going to grow up in a hellscape, grim climate study finds —Ghost forests are growing as sea levels rise Allan pointed out water availability is more complicated than what the study considered, because the simulations don't take into account the amount of water and moisture in the ground or how much water is flowing in the rivers, for example. Still, "this storyline could play out in the future," Allan said. "Because it has such big possibilities for regional water availability, this has got to be taken seriously." In terms of future research, Steinert says it would be helpful to look at the local, specific outcomes for places that might be impacted by shifting weather patterns due to a warming climate. But the best way to avoid these risks is straightforward. "I mean, that's very clear," Steinert said. "Cut emissions as soon as possible."
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
Heatwaves getting worse? Scientists say answer is to cut out fossil fuels, fast
ISTANBUL, May 31 — Human-driven climate change added an average of 30 extra days of extreme heat over the past year for nearly half of the world's population, according to a new report released Friday ahead of Heat Action Day on June 2. The study, conducted by scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA), Climate Central, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, emphasises the growing risks posed by heat waves as global fossil fuel use continues, Anadolu Ajansi (AA) reported. Between May 2024 and May 2025, some four billion people, about half of the global population, faced at least 30 additional days of extreme heat, defined as temperatures hotter than 90 per cent of historical observations for their regions, compared to a world without climate change. The researchers also found that climate change increased the number of extreme heat days by at least twofold in 195 countries and territories. All 67 major heat events recorded in the last year were exacerbated by human-caused climate change. 'This study needs to be taken as another stark warning. Climate change is here, and it kills,' said Friederike Otto, co-lead of WWA and senior lecturer at Imperial College London. 'We know exactly how to stop heat waves from getting worse: restructure our energy systems to be more efficient and based on renewables, not fossil fuels.' Mariam Zachariah, a researcher at Imperial College London, described the results as 'staggering,' noting that frequent, intense heat spells are linked to widespread impacts, including heat illnesses, deaths, crop losses, lowered productivity, and transport disruptions. Roop Singh, head of Urban and Attribution at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, emphasised the urgent need to scale up responses. 'We need better early warning systems, heat action plans, and long-term urban planning to meet the rising challenge,' Singh said. Vice President for Science at Climate Central Kristina Dahl stressed that heat is the deadliest consequence of climate change. 'There is no place on Earth untouched by climate change, and we have the science to quantify how fossil fuel emissions are reshaping our daily temperatures and putting billions at risk,' she said. The report calls for governments to strengthen heat action plans, increase monitoring and reporting of heat impacts, and prioritise long-term adaptation strategies. — Bernama-Anadolu
The National
2 days ago
- Politics
- The National
What can the UK's muddy shores tell us about marine conservation in the Gulf?
The history of the ocean seabed could be central to the future health of planet Earth, say scientists. Seabeds capture carbon from the remains of marine life. But when the ocean floors are disturbed by trawling or coastal development, the carbon is released from the sea into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Scientists also believe that the seabed's ability to capture carbon could be used to cut global CO2 emissions by up to 6 per cent of the amount needed to cap the rise in global temperatures at 1.5°C. Carbon stores have been mapped around the world, but scientists are hoping they can go deeper to understand with greater accuracy the human and animal behaviours that cause seabeds to release or capture the gas. 'We will write a new history of the ocean, telling the story of how the seabed has been changed over centuries by human activities,' said Professor Callum Roberts, a marine biologist who is leading the Convex Seascape Survey at the University of Exeter. 'We're figuring out where are the most, the deepest and the most rich deposits of carbon in the seas,' he said, of the project which also involves the Blue Marine Foundation, a UK charity. 'At the moment, we don't have really strong science to give us robust answers,' he told The National. 'We're recreating the oceanography back to 17,000 years ago and we can turn back the clock.' The comprehensive survey, which also brings in researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Jeddah among other institutions, could alter how coastal seas are managed and protected. 'When we think about marine protection, we protect certain things like habitats or species, but not typically the sediments and the organic matter and carbon that's contained within (them),' said Zoe Roseby, a marine geologist at the University of Exeter who is part of the five-year project. Shallow seabeds of the Gulf Although most the research has taken place in the UK, the findings will be of relevance to the Arabian Gulf, a shallow sea where urban development and commercial shipping increase at a rapid pace. 'We're focused on continental shelves, the underwater extensions of land masses. They go down to about 200 metres, which means the entirety of the Arabian Gulf is continental shelf,' said Prof Roberts, who has written about coral reefs in Saudi Arabia, which he helped to map in the 1990s. Although most fishing in the Gulf does not disturb the seabed, the increase in trawling, and the need to create deeper sea routes for commercial shipping could put the area at risk. 'We need to understand that impact, at least because we would need to incorporate this international carbon budgets, so that decision makers know that it's happening and they know that they need to include this in net zero calculations,' he said. Studies had shown there were benefits and negative side-effects to energy infrastructure such as offshore oil wells and wind farms. But Prof Roberts also suggests that shallow sea-beds could be disturbed so as to move the carbon to the deep sea, where there is little chance of it escaping into the atmosphere. 'If you're stirring up carbon from the seabed, then if there is a flow of water off the shelf, then that carbon could be taken into the deep sea, which is a long-term carbon store,' he said. Little is known about this process, and it is one of the possibilities that the project hopes to find an answer to. 'If some of that carbon is going down into the deep sea, then disturbance could actually contribute to long term storage. It's a paradox that we don't know scientifically what the answer is,' he said. Prof Roberts believes the Gulf could be a good test case for this because of the interaction between the freshwater Euphrates and Tigris rivers that feed into the sea, and the sea water from coming in from the other side through the Straits of Hormuz. 'That's one of the things that's keeping the Arabian Gulf habitable for marine life, is that you get this big exchange of water coming in,' Prof Roberts said. 'It could be that disturbing carbon in the Arabian Gulf is leading to the transport of that carbon through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea and deep water,' he said. 'There is possibly a way in which that carbon could be transported to somewhere it is more secure and less likely to come back into the atmosphere,' he said. Antarctica samples go to Jeddah The research is already expanding to other parts of the world. A recent expedition to Antarctica, led marine ecologist Professor Carlos Duarte who is based at KAUST, will seek to establish the role that whales play in maintaining the ocean's ability to sequester carbon. The survey looking back 500 years will examine the changes in carbon stores in periods when whales thrived on the peninsula, compared to those when whale hunting led to their near extinction. "We hope to either validate or reject the hypothesis that great whales contribute to carbon sequestration by keeping the ecosystem in a highly productive stage," Prof Duarte told The National. The samples extracted earlier this year will arrive in Jeddah in June month for eDNA testing. "If the hypothesis is correct, then when whales were being hunted down, we expect to see that ... the organic carbon content of the sediment will decline, ... along with the decline in productivity in plants," he said. "We can reconstruct a record of how the Antarctic ecosystem responded to the massive depletion of whales," he said. North west coastal research Scientists are finding the richest carbon stores around the UK and Ireland by looking at deep history all the way back to the end of the last Ice Age. The melting of ice sheets 17,000 years ago changed the shape of the coastline, as well as the tidal currents. A team led by Dr Sophie Ward developed a model that could trace the changes in coastal shapes, and tidal currents through this time, in order to identify the places with the most carbon-rich mud stores, and how vulnerable they are to disturbance. 'We've used this case study to look at the carbon stock of the surface elements of that area, to consider the amount of carbon that's being stored in this elements, but also the kind of quality, the reactivity of that carbon as well," Dr Roseby said. "So, how vulnerable is that carbon to disturbance from human pressures, such as trawling." The study published last month found that while mud was still accumulating in places like the Western Irish Sea Mud Belt and the Celtic Deep, in the North Sea's Fladen Ground above Scotland, the mud floor was ancient, formed after the end of the last Ice Age and preserved for millennia by low tidal currents. She hopes the model will allow them to predict the location of muds in other lesser studied seas, such as those on the coast of Patagonia, where the team will be heading next. Their findings will remain open source so that other scientists can access them, she said. The data that we produce in our projects is going to be open access, so other members of the scientific community will be able to utilise our model and data outputs for like, any you know, ongoing work that they're doing,' she said. Sedimentologist Torsa Sengupta showed how she was able to trace the amount of carbon in a muddle samples from the laboratories at Exeter University's Penryn campus in Cornwall. Sediment cores several metres long were extracted from the North Sea corers, then cut into metre-long samples and analysed in laboratories. The deeper the sediment, the older the carbon deposits in there will be. The mud is first dried and then mortared make a fine powder. Then an acid is poured onto it to remove the inorganic carbon that comes from sea shells. The resulting powder, which has isolated the organic carbon, is then put into a carbon analysis machine. 'We use this course to identify the total amount of carbon, and the difference in the proportion between organic and inorganic carbon, and how did the amount and the types of organic carbon change through time,' she said. 'This is mainly to find out the natural organic carbon, or the natural carbon reservoirs deep down in ocean sediments which can spread,' she said. The research can take months of this painstaking work. Yet Ms Sengupta said she is compelled to do it because of the rise in climate-related migration, which affects the developing world the most. 'Even when humans had no control over the climate, the natural climate has driven large human populations to migrate,' she said. 'That motivated me to find out, where is this total source of carbon?'.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Energy Dept. Cuts $3.7 Billion for New Technologies to Lower Emissions
The Energy Department announced on Friday that it was terminating $3.7 billion in Biden-era awards to companies trying to demonstrate technologies that might one day help tackle global warming. Some of the 24 canceled awards would have gone to industrial companies that were aiming to reduce emissions from cement, iron, glass and chemicals production. Others had been awarded to fossil fuel and cement companies attempting to trap and bury carbon dioxide from their smokestacks before the gas escapes into the atmosphere and heats the planet. Two of the terminated awards, worth $540 million in all, would have gone to Calpine, one of the nation's largest producers of electricity, which was trying to capture and store the carbon from two large natural gas power plants in Yuba City, Calif., and Baytown, Texas. Also on the chopping block was a $331 million award to the oil giant Exxon Mobil, which had been planning to replace natural gas with lower-emissions hydrogen at a chemical facility in Baytown, Texas. In announcing the cuts, the Energy Department said in a statement that the projects 'failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.' 'Today, we are acting in the best interest of the American people by canceling these 24 awards,' Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. He said that the previous administration had 'failed to conduct a thorough financial review' of the spending and suggested the process had been rushed, noting that 16 of the awards had been made between Election Day and President Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
