Updates from the news #01 – 15 January 2024

This is the first Update since late 2023. These are written mostly for the students in my courses, which during spring semester 2024 are BSC2832 Global Change Ecology and BSC4055 Climate Change and Human Systems – One Health. If you wish to continue to receive these updates through the summer subscribe (free) to www.environmentalcentury.net

A lot has happened since the last Update. I will review these in their order of importance over 2023 As usual, some links are included that are for general information.

Image from NASA Vital Signs of the Planet 2023

Failure of COP28. There was little to cheer about resulting from the 28^th UN Conference of the Parties held in Dubai, UAE, in early December. COP28 like all previous COPs failed to reach a definitive agreement to “phase out” fossil fuels, instead adopting language to “phase down” their use. In the end 190 nations agreed to this language, which at least acknowledges, albeit tacitly for the most part, that fossil fuels are the central issue. Regardless of the language, there is no explicit timeline for reducing emissions. The island nations were largely left out of the final negotiations.

Earlier in the proceedings negotiators from the fossil majors inserted the qualifier “unabated” which obliquely refers to capturing carbon emissions before they are released when fossil fuels are burned. Thankfully, this was omitted in the final agreement. In a separate meeting, COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber stated that there is no science showing that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to achieve the COP21 Paris Agreement of December 2015. This is nonsense, of course, and dozens of peer-reviewed papers have shown that without killing fossil fuels there is little hope of halting warming. This is simple physics. It is worth noting that the first COP to explicitly use the term fossil fuels was COP26, just two years earlier in Glasgow.  The number of official fossil-fuel-allied delegates at the COPs exceed the number from any single nation and has increased since COP25: COP26 – 503, COP27 – over 600, COP28 – over 2400.

Because the advance press for COP28 had been so negative, the principals went for an easy, early win. On the first day of the conference The Loss and Damage Fund received $700 million in pledges from developed nations (the form of these pledges remains unclear). A UN best estimate for the amount needed is $300 billion every year through 2030 to ensure adaptation in the poorer nations mainly in the Global South.

The bottom line is that the COPs continue to be the only game in town where most nations sit down and negotiate, but progress is not near fast enough to make a meaningful difference in salvaging a livable planet. Once again, Lucy moved the football and climate scientists and policy progressives collectively fell on our ass. COP29 in late 2024 will be in Azerbaijan and will be presided over by a former oil minister.

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Unexplained global heating in 2023. The data are in for the climate for 2023 and they are stunning.  If we compare 2023 to various proxy measures, 2023 was likely the hottest year in many thousands of years. Every major meteorological organization got it wrong in their projections.  The final tallies from NASA, UK Met, NOAA, and Berkeley Earth ranged from 1.34˚C to 1.54˚C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). The differences can be attributed to different baselines of comparison used by these organizations. There is ongoing debate about why 2023 was so hot, although all agencies agree that greenhouse gas driven heating is the primary driver. Some observers, like me, wonder if the Earth System has not entered a new meteorological regime.

Temperatures over land were astonishing (more than 2˚C above pre-industrial) and warming of the oceans, especially in the North Atlantic was well above anticipated values. Ocean heating content and sea level rise set new record highs. The rate of sea level rise has been accelerating over the past three decades.

2023 North Atlantic heating relative to 2022.

It will be interesting to see if the projections for 2024 come true, but all groups estimate that this year will be warmer than 2023.

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Ice melt of Western Antarctica is now locked in. Future increase in West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS) melting over the 21^st century is likely unavoidable. An important paper in Nature Climate Change shows that approximately triple the historic rate of ocean warming is likely to occur over the remainder of this century regardless of our attempts to mitigate greenhouse gases. This could lead to the collapse of the WAIS, which will accelerate the advance of major ice sheets into the ocean and significantly increasing sea level rise. The glacial masses that are melting from underneath include the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, which are holding back massive expanses of continental ice. Sadly, this finding is representative of several other climate studies from regions around the world that show we are passing thresholds, or tipping points in the Earth System.

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European heat-related mortality during summer 2022 exceeded 60,000 among 35 countries. This compares to ~70,000 excess deaths that occurred during the summer 2003 and suggests that perhaps preparedness and early warning has saved some lives. It is important to understand that cold continues to kill more people than heat, but these data and many other studies show that heat-related mortality is on the rise. Spain shows some of the highest heat-related mortality.

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Earth is now beyond six of nine quantified planetary boundaries. One of the climate papers that made headlines in 2023 shows that humanity has pushed into the danger zone for six of the nine quantified planetary boundaries. We are fast approaching the limit for ocean acidification, which would make seven of nine.

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Quantifying the human cost of global warming. When promoting the health benefits of controlling global heating it is essential that the public and policy makers understand the human costs of failure. An important paper appeared in May 2023 in Nature Sustainability in which the human exposure to excess heat was quantified for different levels of global heating relative to pre-industrial. The bar graph below shows that exposure at 1.5˚C and 2.7˚C (419 million people compared to 1.997 million people) in a world of 9.5 billion. The higher level is effectively the lower limit of warming projected under the current pledges and promises of emission reductions.

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Arctic and Antarctic sea ice at record lows by wide margins. Reinforcing the reality that warming during 2023 has been unprecedented is the record low sea ice at both poles.

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170 scientists sent a letter to Biden asking him to reject the CP2 LNG terminal and all new fracked gas infrastructure. I was a signatory. You can see the press release here and the pdf here.