Earth shattered global heat record in ’23 and it’s flirting with warming limit, European agency says
Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday.
The European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That’s barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.
Read more on Associated Press News.
Weather whiplash, wildfire smoke, and flooding rains — a look back at the extreme weather of 2023
It’s been a wild ride, with weather extremes that had us running the Shop-Vac in our basements, seeking refuge from unhealthy air, and scratching our heads at a cold snap in the midst of a mild winter. Climate experts say there’s more to come.
The past year has been marked by extreme weather across New England — punctuated by an extreme Arctic blast, followed by relentless rains that even now aren’t letting up.
Scientists say many of these events track with what’s expected with a warming — and already warmer — planet.
The mid-December storm, which inundated the East Coast under as much as 7 inches of rain and battered it with high winds, seems to be yet another bullet point in this relentlessly rainy year, which also has the distinction of being Earth’s hottest year in recorded history.
Read more on The Boston Globe.
Yes, the climate crisis is now ‘gobsmacking.’ But so is some progress
This is the year that “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” summed up the climate emergency. But dramatic descriptors extend to the huge gains humanity has made too.
Scientists are running low on words to adequately describe the world’s climate chaos. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could already say earlier this month that there was more than a 99 percent chance that 2023 was the hottest year on record. That followed September’s sky-high temperatures—an average of 0.5 degrees Celsius above the previous record—which one climate scientist called “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.” When one of this summer’s rapidly intensifying hurricanes, fueled by extraordinarily high ocean temperatures, leapt from a 60-knot tropical storm to a 140-knot Category 5, one scientist simply tweeted: “Wait, what???”
Here’s how experts graded US climate progress in 2023
Climate experts give the U.S. mixed grades on its efforts to mitigate climate change — but they all agree there’s room for improvement.
’Tis the season to be merry … and get graded. As students across the country anxiously await their report cards, we thought it would be a good time to ask climate experts to grade the United States’ efforts to address the issue over the last year.
They were more than happy to play along.
Longleaf pine restoration—a major climate effort in the south—curbs its ambitions to meet harsh realities
A public-private partnership confronts the challenges of nature-based solutions, including urban growth, logging pressures and a warming planet
On a fall walk through Tuskegee National Forest, ecologist John Kush kept his eyes on the ground, looking for sprouts of hope.
“It’s not too bad,” he said, cautiously. “The overstory is longleaf. But it’s the understory that tells the picture.”
A retired Auburn University research fellow, Kush has spent much of his life studying Pinus palustris—the longleaf pine. The state tree of Alabama, it once reigned throughout the southeastern United States, but was all but given up for dead not long ago. Beginning with European settlement, and accelerating after the Civil War, logging and resin extraction drove the sturdy, long-needled species to near-extinction. Less than 3 percent of its original 92 million acre range remained by the 1990s.
Continue reading on Inside Climate News.
Making Sense of COP28
Insights and reflections from members of Woodwell Climate’s delegation to the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference.
Markey, Braun, Houlahan, Garbarino announce bipartisan, bicameral legislation to increase resources for farmers to protect the environment
Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, and Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.), along with Representatives Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06) and Andrew Garbarino (NY-02), today announced the introduction of the Natural Climate Solutions Research and Extension Act. The bipartisan, bicameral legislation would advance sustainable agriculture practices across the United States by making natural climate solutions a high research and extension priority at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), unlocking federal funding for farmers to protect the environment via land management practices that increase carbon storage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading on Senator Markey’s website.
A year of ‘unreal’ fire and warming in the Arctic
Observations from researchers and residents, published annually in a report by NOAA, reveal a region grappling with rapid change.
This summer was the Arctic’s warmest on record, as it was at lower latitudes. But above the Arctic Circle, temperatures are rising four times as fast as they are elsewhere.
The past year overall was the sixth-warmest year the Arctic had experienced since reliable records began in 1900, according to the 18th annual assessment of the region, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday.
“What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and an editor of the new report, called the Arctic Report Card.
Read more on The New York Times.