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| Hieronymus Bosch--Ship of Fools |
Earth's global warming fever spiked to deadly new highs across the Northern Hemisphere this summer, and we're feeling the results—extreme heat is now blamed for hundreds of deaths, droughts threaten food supplies, wildfires have raced through neighborhoods in the western United States, Greece and as far north as the Arctic Circle.
At sea, record and near-record warm oceans have sent soggy masses of air surging landward, fueling extreme rainfall and flooding in Japan and the eastern U.S. In Europe, the Baltic Sea is so warm that potentially toxic blue-green algae is spreading across its surface.
There shouldn't be any doubt that some of the deadliest of this summer's disasters—including flooding in Japan and wildfires in Greece—are fueled by weather extremes linked to global warming, said Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. "We know very well that global warming is making heat waves longer, hotter and more frequent," she said.
"The evidence from having extreme events around the world is really compelling. It's very indicative that the global warming background is causing or at least contributing to these events," she said.
The challenges created by global warming are becoming evident even in basic infrastructure, much of which was built on the assumption of a cooler climate. In these latest heat waves, railroad tracks have bent in the rising temperatures, airport runways have cracked, and power plants from France to Finland have had to power down because their cooling sources became too warm.
"We're seeing that many things are not built to withstand the heat levels we are seeing now," Le Quéré said.
Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann said this summer's extreme weather fits into a pattern he identified with other researchers in a study published last year. The jet stream's north-south meanders have been unusually stationary, leading to persistent heat waves and droughts in some areas and days of rain and flooding in others, he said. "Our work last year shows that this sort of pattern ... has become more common because of human-caused climate change, and in particular, amplified Arctic warming."
July’s been an extremely hot month in most parts of the world — but what’s happening at Death Valley in California is just insane.
If you thought it’s hot where you live, you haven’t seen anything. During the last month, over both day and night, the temperature at Death Valley averaged 108.1 °F (42.2 °C) — breaking a record that once used to stand for over 100 years (from 1917 to 2017).
Scorching-hot temperatures in Death Valley are, of course, the norm. For a bit of context, the average temperature in July is 102.2 °F (39 °C) and the previous record was set last year, in 2017. The one before that lasted from 1917. Temperature measurements were made in Furnace Creek, which is located in the heart of the valley, at 190 feet below sea level.
The location is famous for recording the hottest temperature on Earth: 134 °F (56.6 °C) on July 10, 1913. However, that measurement is questioned by some climatologists, who believe that the highest temperature reliably measured at the site was 129 F. But let’s assume for a moment that the former value is reliable.
In 1913, when the value was recorded, one day failed to even reach 100 °F (37.77 °C), and two days hit lows of 70 °F (21.1 °C). This year, the lowest high was 113 °F, and no days were cooler than 82 °F. In other words, regardless of the validity of that one extreme measurement, this July is consistently and significantly above 1913 temperatures, and also above any other year on record.
Even more striking, the high temperature hit at least 120 °F on 21 days, compared to the usual high of 116.5 °F.
These record-high temperatures can almost certainly be attributed to man-induced climate change. It’s not like the valley is the only place to bake — much of continental US is also experiencing record-breaking temperatures, as well as Europe, Japan, and pretty much every place in the northern hemisphere. Rising temperatures and heatwaves are strongly associated with global warming, with a recent study reporting that man-made climate change made heatwaves two times more likely. Essentially, climate change is supercharging the summer, and hotter-than-average temperatures have become the norm.
Here is just a short list of places and countries that have surpassed records this summer:
- Sweden had its hottest July ever.
- The UK had its driest summer in modern history.
- Denmark had its driest and sunniest summer.
- Japan recorded its highest temperature in history. South Korea and Taiwan reported the same thing
- In Algeria, scientists reported the highest temperature ever recorded in Africa.
- Quriyat, Oman, reported the world’s hottest low temperature ever recorded.
- Multiple locations in Southern California, Denver and Montreal reported record-breaking temperatures.
- Glasgow, Scotland, Shannon, Ireland, Belfast and Castlederg, Northern Ireland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Copenhagen in Denmark, all reported record-breaking temperatures.
Earth risks entering a ‘hothouse’ even if we meet the emission targets set under the Paris accord, an international team of researchers warns. Under such a scenario, global average temperatures will be 4-5℃ (7-9℉) higher than pre-industrial levels, and sea levels will be 10 to 60 meters (33 to 200 feet) higher than today. But, perhaps most worryingly, such a situation would be self-enforcing, with warmer climate driving further environmental changes that heat up the globe.
Back in 2016, most of the world’s countries agreed to band together and work to limit climate change to “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) relative to pre-industrial levels — ideally, the document read, we should strive for under 1.5°C. This temperature was chosen as it was believed to be a tipping point for the climate — so common wisdom held that as long as we didn’t exceed that number, we should be fine.
However, the new paper suggests we might not be as safe as we believed using the 2°C mark. This threshold might be enough to trigger other processes that, in turn, will keep driving up temperatures even in the absence of new emissions, the authors report. These include permafrost thaw, the loss of methane hydrates from the ocean floor, weaker land and ocean carbon sinks, the loss of Arctic summer sea ice, the reduction of Antarctic sea ice and polar ice sheets, and a few others we probably don’t even know of yet.
We’re currently just a tad over 1°C above pre-industrial levels. This temperature rising by roughly 0.17°C per decade.
“These tipping elements can potentially act like a row of dominoes. Once one is pushed over, it pushes Earth towards another,” says Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and paper co-author.
“It may be very difficult or impossible to stop the whole row of dominoes from tumbling over. Places on Earth will become uninhabitable if ‘Hothouse Earth’ becomes the reality.”
Over the last 100 years, global temperatures have risen 1 degree C, and they are rising by roughly 0.2 degrees C per decade. So if we want to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees C we have just 25 - 30 years to slash emissions to zero. And that's assuming climate feedback processes don't add to the warming we humans have created.
So what can we do? Well, after the Soviet Union put a man into space in 1961, it took the USA just 8 years to put a man on the moon. Do not underestimate the technological challenges of this. Compared to that, removing CO2 from our economy is easy. We already have wind and solar which produce electricity more cheaply than coal and without any emissions. We have electric cars (EVs), which in just a couple of years will have "sticker prices" at or below those of petrol-driven cars (ICEVs). They are already cheaper to drive, because EVs are much more efficient that ICEVs. What is missing is not the technological know-how. What is missing is will-power. A powerful lobby of fossil fuel producers in a satanic coalition with the rabid right has skillfully produced FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) about the reality of global warming and the costs of mitigating it.
Will this unprecedented heat, these unprecedented droughts and floods, will these lead to a sea change in the willingness of our society to take the steps needed to cut emissions? It's hard to know. People do seem to need actual experiences to believe something. Theory doesn't convince them. Yet, "nuisance flooding" in Miami hasn't changed the position of the Floridian Republicans about climate change. Maybe, after all, humans just are too short-sighted, too stupid, too divided and too selfish to do what is needed. I despair.
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