The accelerating climate crisis has really been hitting the headlines lately
...But wait!
1.5 degrees by 2027? Recently this made the news!
For the first time ever global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius within an entire year
It was actually anticipated that this important threshold would only be reached
in the next few years or the next decade. But now, scientists recently published
data showing that we just passed this benchmark So, let's actually clarify what's happening here.
Have we already exceeded the key 1.5-degree limit agreed in the Paris Climate Accord for good?
And why has this red line already been crossed? There is this tendency towards higher temperature.
And this is largely, um, driven by changes in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So
the CO2 and water vapor and methane and so on. And this has been the main driver for
this constant warming. But superimposed by this there are oscillations there are fluctuations.
One of those fluctuations is exceptionally high solar activity.
The other is a warm weather phenomenon, called El Nino.
Translated from Spanish, El Nino means the child or the boy.
It sounds harmless. But in a warming world, it's not.
Last seen in 2016 it let to the world's hottest year on record.
Thats because El Nino impacts ocean temperature which in turn affects the climate.
So, the El Nino phase is also called the warm phase because as the upwelling of cold
water on the coastline of South America and the western Pacific is suppressed.
The overall temperature in the pacific rises and also this is felt in the global average
temperature in the atmosphere as well. El Nino is a natural climate cycle and
is associated with changing wind patterns and higher water temperatures in the East
Pacific, - so basically the ocean off the coast of Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica.
Here's a NASA illustration from a previous El Nino event.
Warmer waters, just several degrees above average temperatures in the region,
influence ocean currents and weather patterns in large parts of the world.
All of a sudden the rather wet areas in Indonesia and Australia have a dry anomaly. And in South
America you have a very wet conditions in the areas that are normally very dry. And with this
pattern there's also extreme weather related. and higher temperatures in the atmosphere.
How much warmer it will get during the current El Nino is still unclear.
The good news: The phenomenon is expected to end by spring this year.
But is that a reason to relax? Unfortunately, not!
There is an analogy I like is is like a ball rolling down a slope. Um, and,
and that's the, the climate change, the, the ball it keep going down because there is a,
there is a slope. And then on top of this slope they are stones and uh, holes and uh,
branches or things that may affect the trajectory of the ball. And so the ball bounce around
different direction. And that's the El Nino, the variation in, in the solar input, uh, volcanic
eruption or all the rest. But still, after a while, the ball will be farther down the slope.
Floods in Pakistan. Wildfires in Croatian tourists centers last year.
Heavy storms in Brazil in January. Heatwaves around the world.
Weather extremes linked to planetary hearting are already causing catastrophic
damage to lives and economies. And that's all on top of bringing the
planet closer to climate thresholds that trigger rapid and probably irreversible
changes. And I'd call them critical organs of
the earth that are important for, for planetary stability as a whole. And examples for tipping
elements are the Greenland ice sheet, which has approximately seven meters of sea level rise,
the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which has between 3 to 5m of sea level rise if melted down.
Other systems in danger to tip over are oral reefs and the Amazon.
Recently, scientists expressed "alarm" over the latest findings that the so-called AMOC,
a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic, is about to shift due to rapid ice melt.
If it were to fail, Europe would see a dramatic drop in temperatures
of up to 10 degrees on average. In southern hemisphere countries,
warming could intensify, and in the Amazon region the rainy and dry seasons could be reversed.
Sea levels would rise at a speed that would make it impossible for humans to adapt in time.
So all these systems are now showing signs of a beginning instability. And that warns us,
basically that we should stop global warming as soon as we can and then get
back to safe temperatures. , which are on the order
long term on the order of one degree. In 2015, the global community agreed to
limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. A global pact to prevent potentially
irreversible effects of climate change. But the Paris agreement target refers to
a long-term temperature average over a 20-to-30-year period.
Breaching 1.5 once doesn't mean that from now on we will necessarily do so every year.
We are moving towards, that world. And we indeed have seen the first occurrence of
a 12-month period where this has happened. And next year or in two years' time will be
just more likely for this to happen. And we are, in a sense, from a climate point
of view already in a 1.5 world without being yet there in the terms of the Paris Agreement.
But that doesn’t make this new record less alarming.
Global CO2 emissions are still rising and we are burning more coal, oil and gas than ever.
With these countries using most of it.
At the same time investment in renewables is accelerating. Solar,
wind, green energies are being deployed at record rates in places like the EU and China.
But the decarbonisation of the economies must speed up if heads of government want
to keep their promises and permanently limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.