It’s now almost inevitable that 2023 will be the warmest year ever recorded by humans, probably the warmest for at least 125,000 years.

Multiple temperature records were smashed with global average temperatures for some periods well above 1.5°C. Antarctic sea ice loss is accelerating at frightening rates along with many other indicators of rapid climate change. Does this mean 2023 is the year parts of the climate tip into a much more dangerous state?

Most people expect that if a system, like someone’s body, an ecosystem, or part of the climate system, becomes stressed, it’ll respond fairly predictably – double the pressure, double the impact, and so on. This holds in many cases, but is not always true. Sometimes a system under stress changes steadily (or “linearly”) up to a point, but beyond that far bigger or abrupt changes can be locked in.

An example of such “nonlinear” changes are “tipping points”, which happen when a system is pushed past a threshold beyond which change becomes self-sustaining. This means that even if the original pressure eased off the change would keep on going until the system reaches a sometimes completely different state.

Think of rolling a boulder up a hill. This takes a lot of energy. If that energy input is stopped then the ball will roll back down. But when the top of the hill is reached and the boulder is balanced right at the very top, a tiny push, perhaps even a gust of wind, can be enough to send it rolling down the other side.

The climate system has many potential tipping points, such as ice sheets disappearing or dense rainforests becoming significantly drier and more open. It would be very difficult, effectively impossible, to recover these systems once they go beyond a tipping point.

We along with 200 other scientists from around the world just published the new Global Tipping Points Report at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai. Our report sets out the science on the “negative” tipping points in the Earth system that could harm both nature and people, as well as the potential “positive” societal tipping points that could accelerate sustainability action.

Here we look at the key messages from report sections on tipping points in the Earth system, their effects on people, and how to govern these changes.

Tipping points in air, land and sea

Having scoured scientific evidence of past and current changes, and factored in projections from computer models, we have identified over 25 tipping points in the Earth system.

Six of these are in the icebound parts of the planet (the “cryosphere”), including the collapse of massive ice sheets in Greenland and different parts of Antarctica, as well as localised tipping in glaciers and thawing permafrost. Sixteen are in the “biosphere” – the sum of all the world’s ecosystems – including trees dying on a massive scale in parts of the Amazon and northern boreal forests, degradation of savannas and drylands, nutrient overloading of lakes, coral reef mass mortality, and many mangroves and seagrass meadows dying off.

Photo by Daniel Seßler on Unsplash

Finally, we identified four potential tipping points in the circulation of the oceans and atmosphere, including collapse of deep ocean mixing in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and disruption of the West African monsoon.

Human activities are already pushing some of these close to tipping points. The exact thresholds are uncertain, but at today’s global warming of 1.2°C, the widespread loss of warm water coral reefs is already becoming likely, while tipping in another four vital climate systems is possible. These are Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, North Atlantic circulation collapse, and widespread localised thaw of permafrost.

Beyond 1.5°C several of these become likely, and other systems like mangroves, seagrass meadows, and parts of the boreal forest start to become vulnerable. Some systems can also tip or have their warming thresholds reduced due to other drivers, such as deforestation in the Amazon.

It can be hard to comprehend the consequences of crossing these tipping points. For example, if parts of the Amazon rainforest die, countless species would be lost, and warming would be further amplified as billions of tons of carbon currently locked up in trees and soils makes its way into the atmosphere. Within the region, this could cause trillions of dollars of economic impacts, and expose millions of people to extreme heat.

Given the sheer scale of risks from tipping points, you may assume that economic assessments of climate change include them. Alas, most assessments effectively ignore tipping point risks. This is perhaps the most frightening conclusion of the new report.

Human societies could tip into something much worse

There is also the potential for negative tipping in human societies, causing further financial instability, displacement, conflict or polarisation. These would hamper our efforts to limit further Earth system tipping points, and could even bring about a shift to a social system characterised by greater authoritarianism, hostility and alienation that could entirely derail sustainability transitions.

A further risk is that most of Earth’s tipping systems interact in ways that destabilise one another. In the worst case, tipping one system makes connected systems more likely to tip too. This could produce a “tipping cascade” like falling dominoes.

The Global Tipping Points Report makes clear that climate change is a key driver for most of these tipping points, and the risk of crossing them can be reduced by urgently cutting greenhouse gas emissions to zero (which “positive tipping points” could accelerate). To help prevent tipping points in the biosphere, we’ll also need to rapidly reduce habitat loss and pollution while supporting ecological restoration and sustainable livelihoods.

Ambitious new governance approaches are needed. Our report recommends international bodies like the UN’s climate talks urgently start taking tipping points into account. Their understanding of dangerous climate change needs a serious update.

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James Dyke, Associate Professor in Earth System Science, University of Exeter and David Armstrong McKay, Researcher in Earth System Resilience, Stockholm University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Cronkite News ) – The arid West is getting drier, and shrinking water supplies pose a boatload of risks to human health throughout the region.

Those findings come from a new federal report on climate change that also covers a broad range of hazards brought on by changing climate patterns due to human activity, from flooding to wildfires, drought to rising sea levels.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment identified drying in the Colorado River basin as one of the greatest climate risks facing the Southwest, as well as the region’s biggest area for future climate mitigation and adaptation.

The problem hinges on one key fact: The Southwest is getting drier, and it’s likely not a temporary phenomenon. Climate change is shrinking the amount of water on the surface and underground, replacing the normal ebb and flow of occasional drought with a permanent resetting of the baseline for how much water the region should expect to see each year, a process scientists call “aridification.”

Higher temperatures mean a shorter snow season and less water piling up as snow. Two-thirds of the Colorado River starts as snow in the state of Colorado. At the same time, the snow that does fall is being absorbed by thirsty soil and failing to make it all the way to rivers.

Heidi Steltzer, a professor of environment and sustainability at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, said that means people living in a dry region will have to shift their behaviors and develop practices that use less water.

“If we don’t have a lot of snow in any given winter, or over a five or 10 year stretch, where and how can we shift to some of these behaviors that ensure everybody has enough, even if it’s not as much as we used to have?” Steltzer asked.

Steltzer didn’t work on the Fifth National Climate Assessment but helped author a major United Nations climate report in 2019. She said rural communities, which often steward much of the nation’s land and natural resources through agriculture, should be a bigger part of conversations about combating climate change.

The new federal climate report doesn’t include many new scientific findings, but rather summarizes a lot of existing research and puts it in a context that is accessible to the general public. It also highlights the human health risks brought on by climate change. Across the country, those risks include heat-related deaths, breathing problems induced by poor air quality and wildfire smoke, and mental trauma brought on by natural disasters.

The report said already-marginalized groups – such as people of color, people with disabilities, and people experiencing homelessness- are disproportionately vulnerable to those climate-related health hazards.

The assessment’s authors say the latest report has an increased focus on climate justice compared to previous reports. In the Southwest, the report highlights drought-related health risks for Native American communities.

Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who focuses on tribal water infrastructure and Indigenous health policy, helped author the report.

“In the Southwest, a lot of Native American homes don’t have infrastructure to get clean running water or sanitation,” she said. “The climate impacts of drought or flooding in an area where infrastructure is not sufficient is just going to make those inequities worse.”

Tanana said fixing those problems starts with better data about the impacts of climate change. Climate data about tribal communities, in particular, has historically been limited.

“When we have better data, we’re able to be more adaptive to implement climate solutions,” she said.

Water policymakers across the Southwest are currently working on new ways to reduce demand as a response to shrinking water supplies brought on by climate change. State leaders are under pressure to agree on new water management rules by 2026, when the current set of guidelines for managing the Colorado River expires. They are also facing steady calls to give tribal groups a larger voice in those negotiations.

-This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

Via Cronkite News

(The Conversation) – On the morning of December 6 1917, a French cargo ship called SS Mont-Blanc collided with a Norwegian vessel in the harbour of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. The SS Mont-Blanc, which was laden with 3,000 tons of high explosives destined for the battlefields of the first world war, caught fire and exploded.

The resulting blast released an amount of energy equivalent to roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT, destroying a large part of the city. Although it was far from the front lines, this explosion left a lasting imprint on Halifax in a way that many regions experience environmental change as a result of war.

The attention of the media is often drawn to the destructive explosions caused by bombs, drones or missiles. And the devastation we have witnessed in cities like Aleppo, Mosul, Mariupol and now Gaza certainly serve as stark reminders of the horrific impacts of military action.

However, research is increasingly uncovering broader and longer-term consequences of war that extend well beyond the battlefield. Armed conflicts leave a lasting trail of environmental damage, posing challenges for restoration after the hostilities have eased.

Research interest in the environmental impacts of war

Toxic legacies

Battles and even wars are over relatively quickly, at least compared to the timescales over which environments change. But soils and sediments record their effects over decades and centuries.

In 2022, a study of soil chemistry in northern France showed elevated levels of copper and lead (both toxic at concentrations above trace levels), and other changes in soil structure and composition, more than 100 years after the site was part of the Battle of the Somme.

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

Research on more recent conflicts has recorded the toxic legacy of intense fighting too. A study that was carried out in 2016, three decades after the Iran-Iraq war, found concentrations of toxic elements like chromium, lead and the semi-metal antimony in soils from the battlefields. These concentrations were more than ten times those found in soils behind the front lines.

The deliberate destruction of infrastructure during war can also have enduring consequences. One notable example is the first Gulf War in 1991 when Iraqi forces blew up more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait. Crude oil spewed into the surrounding environment, while fallout from dispersing smoke plumes created a thick deposit known as “tarcrete” over 1,000 sq km of Kuwait’s deserts.

The impact of the oil fires on the air, soil, water and habitats captured global attention. Now, in the 21st century, wars are closely scrutinised in near real-time for environmental harm, as well as the harm inflicted on humans.

Embed from Getty Images
American Red Adair fire fighting worker sets up a permanent hose 30 May 1991 in Al-Ahmadi oil field in southern Kuwait in order to keep the fire of the damaged oil wells in the direction of the wind whilst protecting the employees who attempt to extinguish it. In 1991, Iraqi troops retreating after a seven-month occupation, smashed and torched 727 wells, badly polluting the atmosphere and creating crude oil lakes. In addition, up to eight billion barrels of oil were split into the sea by Iraqi forces damaging marine life and coastal areas up to 400 kilometres (250 miles) away. Kuwait will seek more than 16 billion dollars compensation for environment destruction wrought by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba said 07 December 1998. (Photo credit should read MICHEL GANGNE/AFP via Getty Images).

Conflict is a systemic catastrophe

One outcome of this scrutiny is the realisation that conflict is a catastrophe that affects entire human and ecological systems. Destruction of social and economic infrastructure like water and sanitation, industrial systems, agricultural supply chains and data networks can lead to subtle but devastating indirect environmental impacts.

Since 2011, conflict has marred the north-western regions of Syria. As part of a research project that was led by my Syrian colleagues at Sham University, we conducted soil surveys in the affected areas.

Our findings revealed widespread diffuse soil pollution in agricultural land. This land feeds a population of around 3 million people already experiencing severe food insecurity.

The pollution probably stems from a combination of factors, all arising as a consequence of the regional economic collapse that was caused by the conflict. A lack of fuel to pump wells, combined with destruction of wastewater treatment infrastructure, has led to an increased reliance on streams contaminated by untreated wastewater for irrigating croplands.

Contamination could also stem from the use of low-grade fertilisers, unregulated industrial emissions and the proliferation of makeshift oil refineries.

More recently, the current conflict in Ukraine, which prompted international sanctions on Russian grain and fertiliser exports, has disrupted agricultural economies worldwide. This has affected countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Nigeria and Iran particularly hard.

Many small farmers in these countries may have been forced into selling their livestock and abandoning their land as they struggle to buy the materials they need to feed their animals or grow crops. Land abandonment is an ecologically harmful practice as it can take decades for the vegetation densities and species richness typical of undisturbed ecosystems to recover.

Warfare can clearly become a complicated and entangled “nexus” problem, the impacts of which are felt far from the war-affected regions.

Conflict, cascades and climate

Recognising the complex, cascading environmental consequences of war is the first step towards addressing them. Following the first Gulf War, the UN set up a compensation commission and included the environment as one of six compensable harms inflicted on countries and their people.

Jordan was awarded more than US$160 million (£127 million) over a decade to restore the rangelands of its Badia desert. These rangelands had been ecologically ruined by a million refugees and their livestock from Kuwait and Iraq. The Badia is now a case study in sustainable watershed management in arid regions.

In the north-west region of Syria, work is underway to assess farmers’ understanding of soil contamination in areas that have been affected by conflict. This marks the first step in designing farming techniques aimed at minimising threats to human health and restoring the environment.

Armed conflict has also finally made it onto the climate agenda. The UN’s latest climate summit, COP28, includes the first themed day dedicated to “relief, recovery and peace”. The discussion will focus on countries and communities in which the ability to withstand climate change is being hindered by economic or political fragility and conflict.

And as COP28 got underway, the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK charity that monitors the environmental consequences of armed conflicts, called for research to account for carbon emissions in regions affected by conflict.

The carbon impact of war is still not counted in the global stocktake of carbon emissions – an essential reference for climate action. But far from the sound and fury of the explosions, warfare’s environmental impacts are persistent, pervasive and equally deadly.

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Jonathan Bridge, Reader / Associate Professor in Environmental Geoscience, Sheffield Hallam University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Global emissions of fossil carbon dioxide (CO₂), in yet another year of growth, will increase by 1.1% in 2023. These emissions will hit a record 36.8 billion tonnes. That’s the finding of the Global Carbon Project’s 18th annual report card on the state of the global carbon budget, which we released today.

Fossil CO₂ includes emissions from the combustion and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and cement production. Adding CO₂ emissions and removals from land-use change, such as deforestation and reforestation, human activities are projected to emit 40.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023.

The world’s vegetation and oceans continue to remove about half of all CO₂ emissions. The rest builds up in the atmosphere and is causing increasing warming of the planet.

At current emission levels, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit warming to 1.5°C will likely be exceeded in seven years, and in 15 years for 1.7°C. The need to cut emissions has never been so urgent.

Emissions from every fossil source are up

Fossil CO₂ emissions now account for about 90% of all CO₂ emissions from human activities. Emissions from every single fossil source increased this year compared to 2022:

• coal (41% of global CO₂ emissions) up 1.1%
• oil (32%) up 1.5%
• natural gas (21%) up 0.5%
• cement (4%) up 0.8%.

Although global emissions have increased, the picture for individual countries is more diverse. There are some signs of progress towards decarbonisation.

China’s emissions (31% of the global total) increased by 4% with growth in all fossil fuel sources. The highest relative growth was from oil emissions. This was in part due to the transport sector’s recovery after COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

The United States’ emissions (14% of global) are down by 3%. The rapid retirement of coal-fired power plants drove most of this decline. US coal emissions are the lowest since 1903.

India’s emissions (8% of global) increased by 8.2%. Emissions for all fossil fuels grew by 5% or more, with coal the highest at 9.5%. India is now the world’s third-largest fossil CO₂ emitter.

European Union emissions (7% of global) are down by 7.4%. This decline was due to both high renewable energy penetration and the impacts on energy supply of the war in Ukraine.

During the decade of 2013-2022, 26 countries had declining fossil CO₂ emission trends while their economies continued to grow. The list includes Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Romania, South African, United Kingdom and USA.

Total CO₂ emissions are near a peak

While fossil CO₂ emissions continue to increase, net emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation (CO₂ source), minus CO₂ removals, such as reforestation (CO₂ sink), appear to be falling. However, estimates of emissions from land-use change are highly uncertain and less accurate overall than for fossil fuel emissions.

Our preliminary estimate shows net emissions from land-use change were 4.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. These emissions follow a small but relatively uncertain decline over the past two decades.

The declining trend was due to decreasing deforestation and a small increase in reforestation. The highest emitters are Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These three countries contribute 55% of net global CO₂ emissions from land-use change.

Global emissions of fossil carbon dioxide (CO₂), in yet another year of growth, will increase by 1.1% in 2023. These emissions will hit a record 36.8 billion tonnes. That’s the finding of the Global Carbon Project’s 18th annual report card on the state of the global carbon budget, which we released today.

Fossil CO₂ includes emissions from the combustion and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and cement production. Adding CO₂ emissions and removals from land-use change, such as deforestation and reforestation, human activities are projected to emit 40.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023.

The world’s vegetation and oceans continue to remove about half of all CO₂ emissions. The rest builds up in the atmosphere and is causing increasing warming of the planet.

At current emission levels, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit warming to 1.5°C will likely be exceeded in seven years, and in 15 years for 1.7°C. The need to cut emissions has never been so urgent.

Emissions from every fossil source are up

Fossil CO₂ emissions now account for about 90% of all CO₂ emissions from human activities. Emissions from every single fossil source increased this year compared to 2022:

• coal (41% of global CO₂ emissions) up 1.1%
• oil (32%) up 1.5%
• natural gas (21%) up 0.5%
• cement (4%) up 0.8%.

Although global emissions have increased, the picture for individual countries is more diverse. There are some signs of progress towards decarbonisation.

China’s emissions (31% of the global total) increased by 4% with growth in all fossil fuel sources. The highest relative growth was from oil emissions. This was in part due to the transport sector’s recovery after COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

The United States’ emissions (14% of global) are down by 3%. The rapid retirement of coal-fired power plants drove most of this decline. US coal emissions are the lowest since 1903.

India’s emissions (8% of global) increased by 8.2%. Emissions for all fossil fuels grew by 5% or more, with coal the highest at 9.5%. India is now the world’s third-largest fossil CO₂ emitter.

European Union emissions (7% of global) are down by 7.4%. This decline was due to both high renewable energy penetration and the impacts on energy supply of the war in Ukraine.

During the decade of 2013-2022, 26 countries had declining fossil CO₂ emission trends while their economies continued to grow. The list includes Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Romania, South African, United Kingdom and USA.

Total CO₂ emissions are near a peak

While fossil CO₂ emissions continue to increase, net emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation (CO₂ source), minus CO₂ removals, such as reforestation (CO₂ sink), appear to be falling. However, estimates of emissions from land-use change are highly uncertain and less accurate overall than for fossil fuel emissions.

Our preliminary estimate shows net emissions from land-use change were 4.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. These emissions follow a small but relatively uncertain decline over the past two decades.

The declining trend was due to decreasing deforestation and a small increase in reforestation. The highest emitters are Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These three countries contribute 55% of net global CO₂ emissions from land-use change.

When we combine all CO₂ emissions from human activities (fossil and land use), we find very little trend in total emissions over the past decade. If confirmed, this would imply global CO₂ emissions from human activities are not growing further but remain at very high record levels.

Stable CO₂ emissions, at about 41 billion tonnes per year, will lead to continuing rapid CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere and climate warming. To stabilise the climate, CO₂ emissions from human activities must reach net zero. This means any residual CO₂ emissions must be balanced by an equivalent CO₂ removal.

Nature’s a big help, with a little human help

Terrestrial vegetation and ocean absorb about half of all CO₂ emissions. This fraction has remained remarkably stable for six decades.

Besides the natural CO₂ sinks, humans are also removing CO₂ from the atmosphere through deliberate activities. We estimate permanent reforestation and afforestation over the past decade have removed about 1.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year.

This is equivalent to 5% of fossil fuel emissions per year.

Other non-vegetation strategies are in their infancy. They removed 0.01 million tonnes of CO₂.

Machines (direct air carbon capture and storage) pulled 0.007 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Enhanced weathering projects, which accelerate natural weathering processes to increase the CO₂ uptake by spreading certain minerals, accounted for the other 0.004 million tonnes. This is more than a million times smaller than current fossil fuel emissions.

The remaining carbon budget

From January 2024, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C has been reduced to 275 billion tonnes of CO₂. This budget will used up in seven years at 2023 emission levels.

The carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.7°C has been reduced to 625 billion tonnes of CO₂, with 15 years left at current emissions. The budget for staying below 2°C is 1,150 billion tonnes of CO₂ – 28 years at current emissions.

Reaching net zero by 2050 requires total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions to decrease on average by 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s comparable to the fall in 2020 emissions resulting from COVID-19 measures (-2.0 billion tonnes of CO₂).

Without additional negative emissions (CO₂ removal), a straight decreasing line of CO₂ emissions from today to 2050 (when many countries aspire to achieve net zero CO₂ or the more ambitious net zero for all greenhouse gases) would lead to a global mean surface temperature of 1.7°C, breaching the 1.5°C limit.

Renewable energy production is at a record high and growing fast. To limit climate change fossil and land-use change, CO₂ emissions must be cut much more quickly and ultimately reach net zero.

Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO; Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science, University of East Anglia; Glen Peters, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo; Judith Hauck, Helmholtz Young Investigator group leader and deputy head, Marine Biogeosciences section a Alfred Wegener Institute, Universität Bremen; Julia Pongratz, Professor of Physical Geography and Land Use Systems, Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Philippe Ciais, Directeur de recherche au Laboratoire des science du climat et de l’environnement, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA); Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair, Mathematical Modelling of Climate, University of Exeter; Robbie Andrew, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo, and Rob Jackson, Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When we combine all CO₂ emissions from human activities (fossil and land use), we find very little trend in total emissions over the past decade. If confirmed, this would imply global CO₂ emissions from human activities are not growing further but remain at very high record levels.

Stable CO₂ emissions, at about 41 billion tonnes per year, will lead to continuing rapid CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere and climate warming. To stabilise the climate, CO₂ emissions from human activities must reach net zero. This means any residual CO₂ emissions must be balanced by an equivalent CO₂ removal.

Nature’s a big help, with a little human help

Terrestrial vegetation and ocean absorb about half of all CO₂ emissions. This fraction has remained remarkably stable for six decades.

Besides the natural CO₂ sinks, humans are also removing CO₂ from the atmosphere through deliberate activities. We estimate permanent reforestation and afforestation over the past decade have removed about 1.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year.

This is equivalent to 5% of fossil fuel emissions per year.

Other non-vegetation strategies are in their infancy. They removed 0.01 million tonnes of CO₂.

Machines (direct air carbon capture and storage) pulled 0.007 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Enhanced weathering projects, which accelerate natural weathering processes to increase the CO₂ uptake by spreading certain minerals, accounted for the other 0.004 million tonnes. This is more than a million times smaller than current fossil fuel emissions.

The remaining carbon budget

From January 2024, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C has been reduced to 275 billion tonnes of CO₂. This budget will used up in seven years at 2023 emission levels.

The carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.7°C has been reduced to 625 billion tonnes of CO₂, with 15 years left at current emissions. The budget for staying below 2°C is 1,150 billion tonnes of CO₂ – 28 years at current emissions.

Reaching net zero by 2050 requires total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions to decrease on average by 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s comparable to the fall in 2020 emissions resulting from COVID-19 measures (-2.0 billion tonnes of CO₂).

Without additional negative emissions (CO₂ removal), a straight decreasing line of CO₂ emissions from today to 2050 (when many countries aspire to achieve net zero CO₂ or the more ambitious net zero for all greenhouse gases) would lead to a global mean surface temperature of 1.7°C, breaching the 1.5°C limit.

Renewable energy production is at a record high and growing fast. To limit climate change fossil and land-use change, CO₂ emissions must be cut much more quickly and ultimately reach net zero.

Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO; Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science, University of East Anglia; Glen Peters, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo; Judith Hauck, Helmholtz Young Investigator group leader and deputy head, Marine Biogeosciences section a Alfred Wegener Institute, Universität Bremen; Julia Pongratz, Professor of Physical Geography and Land Use Systems, Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Philippe Ciais, Directeur de recherche au Laboratoire des science du climat et de l’environnement, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA); Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair, Mathematical Modelling of Climate, University of Exeter; Robbie Andrew, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo, and Rob Jackson, Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Featured photo via Pixabay

( Clean Energy Wire ) – German industry is increasingly investing in climate protection measures, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported just before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), which kicked off on 30 November.

Climate protection investments in the manufacturing sector have increased by 74.3 percent over a decade. In 2021, manufacturers spent some 4.15 billion euros on systems to avoid emissions or use resources more sparingly, up from 2.38 billion in 2011. Legal regulations and government funding have contributed to the increase in investments, Destatis notes.

Nearly 50 percent of climate protection investments in 2021 — 2.04 billion euros [$2.22 bn.] — went to renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and photovoltaic systems.

Image by Melanie from Pixabay

Companies invested a further 1.63 billion euros ($1.77 bn) (39.2%) in increasing energy efficiency and energy saving, such as thermal insulation of buildings or systems with combined heat and power. The manufacturing and service sectors generated sales of 53 billion euros with climate protection products in 2021 – an 11.9 percent increase compared to the previous year.

The solar sector saw the biggest sales increase in 2021 with a 24 percent boost (920 million euros) for a total of 4.8 billion euros. From 2011 to 2021, sales of climate protection products – such a solar PV arrays and insulation – rose 16 percent. Nearly 55 percent of sales, or 28.6 billion euros, came from measures to increase energy efficiency in 2021.

Thermal insulation of buildings contributed substantially, generating almost 10.2 billion euros [$11.1 bn.] in sales, while the manufacture and installation of wind turbines resulted in revenue of 11.8 billion euros [$12.8 bn.].

Meanwhile, the number of employees in “green jobs,” increased by 44 percent between 2011 and 2021.

German development bank KfW recently reported that climate protection investments by domestic companies in 2022 rose by 18 percent in real terms to 72 billion euros [$78.4 bn.].

Published under a “ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .

In a recent review of more than 180 peer-reviewed articles — which I conducted with fellow researcher Richard Parncutt — we found that a scientific consensus has formed around the so-called 1,000-ton rule.

The 1,000-ton rule states that a person is killed every time humanity burns 1,000 tons of fossil carbon. Shockingly, we found that a 2 C temperature rise equates to a billion prematurely dead people over the next century, killed as a result of a wide range of global warming related climate breakdowns.

These findings were derived from a review of the climate literature that attempted to quantify future human deaths from a long list of mechanisms.

This is a staggering body count, though however uncomfortable it may be, it is consistent with diverse evidence and arguments from multiple disciplines.

As world leaders gather for the COP28 climate conference in Dubai from Nov. 30-Dec. 12, we would do well to remember that their decisions will be directly responsible for killing, or saving, real human lives.

How climate change will kill us

Human-caused climate change has killed — and will continue to kill — many human beings by numerous climatic breakdowns caused through a complex web of direct, intermediate and indirect mechanisms.

Direct mortal effects of climate change include heat waves, which have already caused thousands of human deaths by a combination of heat and humidity and even threaten babies.

Intermediate causes of death involve crop failures, droughts, flooding, extreme weather, wildfires and rising seas. Crop failures, in particular, can make global hunger and starvation worse.

More frequent and severe droughts can lead to more wildfires that also cause human deaths, as we saw in Hawaii. Droughts can also lead to contaminated water, more frequent disease and deaths from dehydration.

The 2022 IPCC Report predicted that drought would displace 700 million people in Africa by 2030.

On the other hand, climate change can also cause flooding (and crop failures from too much water), which also drives hunger and disease. Climate change drives sea level rise and the resultant submersion of low-lying coastal areas and storm surges exacerbate flood risks, which are life-threatening for billions of people in coastal cities who face the prospect of forced migration.

Climate change also increases extreme weather events, which kill and cause considerable damage to essential services such as the electric grid and medical facilities. Salt water intrusion also threatens coastal agriculture, further reducing food supplies.

Finally, climate change also indirectly increases the probability of conflict and war. Although the academic consensus on climate-change-induced war is far from settled, there is little doubt climate change amplifies stress and can cause more localized conflict.

As the number of climate refugees increases, countries further from the equator might increasingly refuse to offer asylum. In a worst-case scenario, social collapse is possible and a Proceeding of the National Academy of Science article reports it could be devastating.

There is still time

A billion dead bodies is a scary prospect but not all of these deaths are predicted to occur at once. In fact, many people are already dying. However, there is still time to protect those remaining from also being killed by climate change by rapidly transitioning away from carbon energy sources.

We need to implement aggressive energy policies today to eliminate carbon emissions in energy conservation, encourage the evolution of the energy mix to renewable energy, and manage carbon waste. We are already doing a lot of this – we just need to do it faster.

Gradual decarbonization is not acceptable if it sacrifices such large numbers of human lives. And while each of these proposals may at first seem shocking, if we ask ourselves “would I accept this policy to save one billion human lives?” then I feel the answer becomes much clearer.

We must act to prevent the deaths of millions of our fellow human beings.

Not so radical

1. We must mandate all new construction be net-zero buildings or positive energy buildings. This would also have the bonus of providing building owners a positive return on investment and it is even possible to make them with no net cost.

2. Mandate mass purchases of energy conservation or renewable energy technologies and make them freely available to everyone with zero-interest loans that are easily paid back with energy savings. For example, a government could construct new factories to provide free insulation or solar panels to everyone that will take them. As an added bonus solar power will save homeowners money on electric bills as well as making major savings on energy conservation measures over their lifetimes.

3. Immediately end the sale of fossil fuel vehicles which will save considerable carbon and money as electric vehicles already have a lower lifetime cost than gas vehicles).

4. Revoke the charters of fossil fuel companies and disperse their assets if a company or industry is responsible for killing more people from emissions than they employ. It is a sobering fact that The United States coal industry already kills more people from air pollution per year than it employs, and that does not include climate change-related deaths.

5. Immediately stop investing in more fossil fuels and heavily tax all fossil fuel-related investments, and/or hold climate emitters as well as investors economically liable for harm caused by carbon emissions in the future.

6. Retrain fossil fuel workers en masse for renewable energy jobs which would help both society and workers who could expect an on average seven per cent pay rise moving to the solar industry.

7. Immediately ban the extraction of fossil fuels with enforced moratoriums.

Each of these seven policies will prevent an escalating amount of carbon from entering the atmosphere, preventing the concomitant climate change and billion premature deaths that would be caused by the status quo.

Moving forward

These policies can be achieved by targeting those first three actions that also directly align with economic savings. As economic replacements for fossil fuel technologies scale, the need for fossil fuel investment will continue its existing decline and pushing that decline further will become more politically palatable. As this is happening it will make sense to protect fossil fuel workers by retraining them so they can help accelerate the transition until all carbon-emitting fossil fuel use is ended to enable a stable climate.

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

This obviously is not going to be easy, but I believe that the vast majority of human beings are good people who will accept temporary inconveniences to transition to an energy system that will prevent one billion premature deaths.

Protecting these lives instead of sacrificing them would be an outcome from COP28 that demonstrates real leadership.

Joshua M. Pearce, John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation and Professor, Western University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the world’s seventh largest oil producer, will host the 28th UN climate change summit (COP28) in Dubai from November 30 to December 12. Presiding over the conference will be the chief executive of the UAE state-owned oil company Adnoc, Sultan al-Jaber.

Given fossil fuels account for nearly 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change, many have argued that there is a clear conflict of interest in having oil and gas producers at the helm of climate talks. The UAE is alleged to flare more gas than it reports and plans to increase oil production from 3.7 million barrels a day to 5 million by 2027.

Some contend that the oil and gas industry could throw the brake on greenhouse gas emissions by investing its vast revenues into plugging gas flares and injecting captured carbon underground. But independent assessments maintain that the industry will need to leave at least some of its commercially recoverable reserves permanently underground to limit global warming. No oil-exporting country but Colombia has yet indicated it will do this.

Dubai appears determined to undermine even this small victory. An investigation has released documents showing the UAE hosts planned to advise a Colombian minister that Adnoc “stands ready” to help the South American country develop its oil and gas reserves.

The UK invited ridicule by expanding its North Sea oil fields less than two years after urging the world to raise its climate ambitions as summit host. The UAE seems destined for a similar fate – before its talks have even begun.

Oil consumption & dependence

The UAE’s fast-growing population of 9.9 million (only 1 million are Emirati citizens) has the sixth highest CO₂ emissions per head globally.

CBC News: “How an oil CEO ended up in charge of COP28”

Citizens are used to driving gas-guzzling cars with fuel priced well below international market rates and using air conditioning for much of the year thanks to utility subsidies. Visiting tourists and conference-goers have come to expect chilled shopping malls, swimming pools and lush golf greens that depend entirely on energy-hungry desalinated water.

Despite decades of policies aimed at diversifying the country’s economy away from oil, the UAE’s hydrocarbon sector makes up a quarter of GDP, half of the country’s exports and 80% of government revenues. Oil rent helps buy socioeconomic stability, for instance, by providing local people with public-sector sinecures.

This state of affairs is a central tenet of the Arabian Gulf social contract, in which citizens of the six gulf states mostly occupy bureaucratic public sector positions administering an oil-based economy with expatriate labour dominating the non-oil private sector.

Tech-fixes, targets and the future

How does the UAE plan to cut its own emissions?

Adnoc and other international oil companies are banking on select technologies (to sceptics, “green cover” for further climate damage) to preserve their core business model: extracting oil.

Adnoc, along with the wider oil and gas industry, has invested in carbon sequestration and making hydrogen fuel from the byproducts of oil extraction. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such measures, even if fully implemented, will only have a small impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

The UAE was the first in the Middle East to ratify the Paris climate agreement and to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. With near limitless sunshine and substantial sovereign wealth, the UAE ranks 18th globally per capita and first among Opec countries for solar power capacity. Solar now meets around 4.5% of the UAE’s electricity demand and projects in the pipeline will see output rise from 23 gigawatts (GW) today to 50GW by 2031.

The Barakah nuclear power plant (the Arab world’s first) started generating electricity in 2020. While only meeting 1% of the country’s electricity demand, when fully operational in 2030, this may rise to 25%.

The oil sector is inherently capital-intensive, not labour-intensive, and so it cannot provide sufficient jobs for Emiratis. The UAE will need to transition to a knowledge-based economy with productive employment in sectors not linked to resource extraction.

In the UAE, sovereign wealth fund Mubadala is tasked with enabling this transition. It has invested in a variety of high-tech sectors, spanning commercial satellites to research and development in renewable energy.

But even if the UAE was to achieve net zero by some measure domestically, continuing to export oil internationally means it will be burned somewhere, and so the climate crisis will continue to grow.

Self-interest

Is disappointment a foregone conclusion in Dubai?

Already one of the hottest places in the world, parts of the Middle East may be too hot to live within the next 50 years according to some predictions.

Rising temperatures risk the UAE’s tourism and conference-hosting sectors, which have grown meteorically since the 1990s (third-degree burns and heatstrokes won’t attract international visitors). A show-stopping announcement to further its global leadership ambitions is not out of the question.

At some point, one of the major oil-exporting countries must announce plans to leave some of its commercially recoverable oil permanently untapped. COP28 provides an ideal platform. A participating country may make such a commitment with the caveat that it first needs to build infrastructure powered by renewable energy and overhaul its national oil company’s business model to one that supplies renewable energy, not fossil fuel, globally.

The UAE has the private capital and sovereign wealth required to build a post-oil economy. But will it risk being the first mover?

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Emilie Rutledge, Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University and Aiora Zabala, Lecturer in Economics and the Environment, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just don’t know it yet.)

Yes, if you actually do live in Gaza, your life is now officially a living (or dying) hell on Earth. Your home has been destroyed, your family members wounded or killed, the hospital you fled to decimated. And that story, sadly enough, has been leading the news day after day for weeks now. But in the process, in some sense even more sadly, the deepest hell of our time has largely disappeared from sight.

I’m thinking about the urge to turn our whole planet into a long-term, slow-motion version of Gaza, to almost literally set it ablaze and destroy it as a habitable place for humanity (and so many other species).

Yes, in the midst of the ongoing Middle Eastern catastrophe, the latest study by James Hanson, the scientist who first sounded the climate alarm to Congress back in the 1980s, appeared. In it, he suggested that, in this year of record temperatures, our planet is heating even more rapidly than expected. The key temperature danger mark, set only eight years ago at the Paris climate agreement, 1.5 degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial level, could easily be reached not in 2050 or 2040, but by (or even before) 2030. Meanwhile, another recent study suggests that humanity’s “carbon budget” — that is, the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere while keeping global temperature rise at or under that 1.5-degree mark — is now officially going to hell in a handbasket. In fact, by October, a record one-third of the days in 2023 had broken that 1.5-degree mark in what is undoubtedly going to prove another — and yes, I know how repetitive this is — record year for heat.

Oh, and when it comes to the globe’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters, China is still opening new coal mines at a remarkably rapid pace, while the U.S., the world’s biggest oil producer, is expected to have “a third of planned oil and gas expansion globally between now and 2050.” And the news isn’t much better for the rest of the planet, which, given the dangers involved, should be headline-making fare. No such luck, of course.

Setting the Planet Afire

In fact, I’ll bet you hardly noticed. And I’m not surprised. After all, the news could hardly be worse these days in a country that, however indirectly, seems distinctly bound for war. There’s Ukraine, turning into ever more of a disaster zone by the week; there’s Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank promising yet more of the same, whether you’re listening to Hamas or Benjamin Netanyahu (with American military activity increasing in the region as well); and then there’s that “cold war” between the U.S. and China — yes, I know, I know, President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping actually met and chatted recently, including about climate change — but don’t hold your breath when it comes to truly improving relations.

And yet, if you were to look away from Gaza for a moment, you might notice that significant parts of the Middle East have been experiencing an historic megadrought since 1998 (yes, 1998!). The temperatures baking the region are believed to be “16 times as likely in Iran and 25 times as likely in Iraq and Syria” thanks to the warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, if you take a skip and a jump from the flaming Middle East to Greenland, you might notice that, in recent years, glaciers there have been melting at — yes, I know this sounds unbearably repetitious — record rates (five times faster, in fact, in the last 20 years), helping add to sea level rise across the planet. And mind you, that rise will only accelerate as the Arctic and Antarctic melt ever more rapidly. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Arctic is already warming four times faster than the global average.

Buy the Book

If you have the urge to put all of this in context for 2023, you need to remind yourself that we’re now ending November, which means a final accounting of the devastation wrought by climate change this year isn’t quite in. Admittedly, it’s already been one hell of a year of record heat and fires, floods, extreme drought, and so on (and on and on). You’ve probably forgotten by now, but there were those record heat waves and fires — and no, I’m not thinking about the ones that swept across Europe or that broiled parts of Greece amid record flooding. I’m thinking about the ones in Canada that hit so much closer to home for us Americans. The wildfires there began in May and, by late June, had already set a typical seasonal record, only to burn on and on and on (adding up to nine times the normal seasonal total!) deep into October, sending billows of smoke across significant parts of the United States, while setting smoke pollution records.

Nor is the news exactly great when it comes to climate change and this country. Yes, heat records are still being set month by month this year in the U.S., even if the record highs are still to be fully tallied. Just consider those 55 days in which our sixth largest city, Phoenix, suffered temperatures of 110 degrees or more (31 of them in a row), resulting in a heat version of Gazan casualties, a 50% surge in the deaths mostly of seniors and the homeless to almost 600. A recent congressionally mandated report released by the Biden administration on global warming found that this country is actually heating up faster than the global average. “The climate crisis,” it reported, “is causing disruption to all regions of the U.S., from flooding via heavier rainfall in the northeast to prolonged drought in the southwest. A constant is heat — ‘across all regions of the U.S., people are experiencing warming temperatures and longer-lasting heatwaves’ — with nighttime and winter temperatures rising faster than daytime and summer temperatures.”

A Planetary Gaza?

For some global context, just consider that, in 2022, the planet’s greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere were the highest on record, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. So were the temperatures of ocean waters, while sea levels rose for the 11th straight year! There were also record-shattering heat waves across the planet and that was the way it all too disastrously went.

And yet none of that will hold water (or do I mean fire?), it seems, when it comes to 2023, which is clearly going to set another heat record. After all, we already know that, month by sweltering month, from November 2022 to the end of October 2023, a major heat record was set that seemingly hadn’t been topped in the last 125,000 years. It’s a near certainty as well that this full year will prove similarly record-breaking. And given the way we humans are still burning fossil fuels, we won’t have to wait another 125,000 years for that to happen again. The odds are, in fact, that 2024 will indeed set another global heat record.

So, tell me, how’s that for a planetary Gaza? And yet, strangely enough, while the nightmare in the Middle East is being covered daily in a dramatic fashion across the mainstream media, often by brave reporters like the PBS NewsHour‘s Leila Molana-Allen, the burning of the planet is, at best, a distinctly secondary, or tertiary, or… well, you can fill in the possible numbers from there… reality.

The sad truth of it is that there aren’t enough reporters spending their time on the front lines of global warming and nowhere do I see the staff members of up to 40 government agencies protesting over the weakness of climate-change policy the way so many of them recently did over the Biden administration’s policies on Israel and Gaza. While every night we venture into the devastated Gaza Strip with reporters like Molana-Allen (not to speak of the 41 journalists who died in the first month of that conflict), rare is the night when we do the same in our overheating world. All too few journalists are focusing on the humans already being driven from their homes, experiencing (and even dying from) unprecedented heat, storms, flooding, and drought.

Nor are there many reporters stepping directly into the flames. I’m thinking, in this case, of the coverage (or lack of it) of the drilling for or mining of fossil fuels, the companies making record profits — absolute ongoing fortunes — off them, while their CEOs are pulling in unbelievable sums yearly, even as the ferocious burning of their products continues to pour carbon into the atmosphere.

And mind you, fossil-fuel emissions are still — a word that once again seems all too appropriate — hellishly high. Yes, the International Energy Agency does expect such emissions to peak before 2030, if not earlier. Still, we humans are going to be burning coal, oil, and natural gas for one hell (that again!) of a long time and those fossil-fuel companies will continue making fortunes while damaging all our lives and those of our children and grandchildren into the distant future.

There’s no question that Gaza has truly been a hell on Earth. Deaths in that small strip of land had already exceeded 11,000 (many of them children) while I was writing this. Meanwhile, from hospitals to homes, Israeli bombs and missiles have turned staggering amounts of its living (or now dying) spaces into rubble. And that is indeed a horror that must be covered (just as the nightmarish initial Hamas attack on Israel was). But in the process of watching Gaza burn, it would be good to remember that we’re also turning the whole planet into a Gazan-style catastrophe. It’s just happening in relative slow motion.

World War II ended in September 1945 and since then — despite endless wars — there hasn’t been another “world” version of one. Gaza and Ukraine remain horrific but relatively localized, just as the Korean and Vietnam conflicts once were.

But while, whatever the horrors and damage done, there hasn’t been another world war, there has been and continues to be a war on the world, a slow-motion global Gaza that will only grow worse unless we put our energy into moving ever faster to transition from coal, natural gas, and oil to alternative energy sources. In truth, that is the war we should all be fighting, not the ones that distract us from the worst dangers we face.

In fact, it’s past time to start talking about World War III, even if this time it’s a war on the planet itself.

Copyright 2023 Tom Engelhardt

Tomdispatch.com

They find that during the past year, 73% of the world’s population suffered through at least one month of sweltering temperatures that were so torrid because humans have been burning coal, fossil gas and petroleum for over a century in gargantuan amounts. Some 25% of humans experienced at least one 5-day heat wave caused by global heating.

While this will be an El Nino year and so there will be extra heat on top of the carbon-induced warming, these scientists maintain that the full effect of El Nino hadn’t been felt by the end of October, so mostly they are reporting disasters caused by human-induced climate change.

They also found that the average temperature of the earth’s surface has already reached 1.3 °C (2.34 °F) above the pre-industrial average.

Climate scientists fear that if we go beyond 1.5 °C, the climate may go chaotic in ways that will be challenging for industrial civilization. For instance, enormous hurricanes and cyclones may flatten all the electricity poles, frequent flooding and storm surges may strike low-lying coastal areas, wildfires may endanger everyone living near forest cover, and long-term drought may ruin agriculture in some places. We forget how dependent our civilization is on it being relatively cool, as it was when the industrial revolution took place in the mid-eighteenth century. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries people used to have frost fairs on the frozen Thames River in London. The last time any part of the Thames froze over was 1963.

We’ve already seen summers when it got too hot in Phoenix for airplanes to take off. Hot air is thinner and doesn’t provide the wings enough lift.

The only way to avoid severe challenges to keeping up civilization is for the world to stop burning petroleum, fossil gas and coal immediately. If we don’t, we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren a host of difficult challenges that may detract from their quality of life or even pose a threat to their lives.

According to the report, in the past six months, 92% of humans on earth experience a heat wave lasting at least 5 days that would not have occurred without human burning of fossil fuels.

Climate change affects different regions differently. The Arctic is warming 4 times faster that the global average, and the Middle East is heating up twice as fast as the global average.

In the past year, Jamaica, Guatamala and Rwanda have been especially affected. The authors write, “on the average day, the average person in Jamaica experienced temperatures made more than four times more likely by human-caused climate change.” Islands in the Caribbean and the South Pacific suffered more than the average with extra hot days caused by climate change.

Reuters: “Scientists say 2023 set to be warmest in 125,000 years”

Among the G20 wealthiest countries in the world, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Indonesia saw the most temperature rise in the first half of the year, but in the second half they were joined by India, Italy, Japan, Brazil, France, and Turkey in suffering from climate change-driven high temperatures.

The team found that of the 700 cities they looked at, Houston, Texas, had the longest streak of extremely high temperatures, at 22 days. Some 12 cities had heat streaks of 5 days or more, caused or intensified by climate change. They were located for the most part in Texas, Florida and Louisiana.

The team found that in the United States, climate change was implicated in 24 extreme weather events during the past year that left nearly 400 people dead and caused $67 billion in damage.