European heatwave

 From The BBC

This El Niño will take temperatures to new highs. The acceleration in recent years is obvious, and I've talked about it before.  The trend will continue.

Will this latest heatwave encourage politicians to do more?  Don't count on it.

France's hottest day ever

 From Nahel Belgherze

France could record its hottest day ever in the coming days, exceeding the 30°C mark nationwide for the first time on record. A truly historic heatwave is on the way.

[Previous highs:]

The Top 5 : 1) 29.40°C 25 July 2019 2) 29.35°C 5 August 2003 3) 28.88°C 9 August2003 4) 28.72°C 24 July 2019 5) 28.69°C 10 August 2003

Note that these are daily averages, not peaks. 

We repeatedly get new excess temperatures, across the world. And we are doing too little to prevent their inexorable rise. EV sales are soaring, solar panel are being deployed at record rates, and batteries have gone from niche to normal. But it's not fast enough. Too many politicians and CEOs do not see the urgency, or, paid by fossil fuel interests, deliberately drag their feet. We face catastrophe, and we dither and phaff, instead of acting quickly and decisively.

Temperatures are rising by at the minimum 0.2 degrees C per decade, though over the last 15 years that has accelerated to 0.3 degrees C. Even if we cut emissions by 70%, temperatures will still be rising by 0.1 degrees C per decade. Better than nothing, but still not good enough. We need to do better.

Rising heat kills one person a minute

 From The Guardian

Rising global heat is now killing one person a minute around the world, a major report on the health impact of the climate crisis has revealed.

It says the world’s addiction to fossil fuels also causes toxic air pollution, wildfires and the spread of diseases such as dengue fever, and millions each year are dying owing to the failure to tackle global heating.

The report, the most comprehensive to date, says the damage to health will get worse with leaders such as Donald Trump ripping up climate policies and oil companies continuing to exploit new reserves.

Governments gave out $2.5bn a day in direct subsidies to fossil fuel users and producers in 2023, the researchers found, while people lost about the same amount because of high temperatures preventing them from working on farms and building sites.

Reduced coal burning has saved about 400 lives a day in the last decade, the report says, and renewable energy production is rising fast. But the experts say a healthy future is impossible if fossil fuels continue to be financed at current rates.

 

Dr Marina Romanello, of University College London (UCL), who led the analysis, said: “This [report] paints a bleak and undeniable picture of the devastating health harms reaching all corners of the world. The destruction to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our fossil fuel addiction.

“We’re seeing millions of deaths occurring needlessly every year because of our delay in mitigating climate change and our delay in adapting to the climate change that cannot be avoided. We’re seeing key leaders, governments and corporations backsliding on climate commitments and putting people increasingly in harm’s way.”

The report says the rate of heat-related deaths has surged by 23% since the 1990s, even after accounting for increases in populations, to an average of 546,000 a year between 2012 and 2021.

“That is approximately one heat-related death every minute throughout the year,” said Prof Ollie Jay, of the University of Sydney, Australia, who was part of the analysis team. “It is a really startling number and the numbers are going up.”

Jay said: “We constantly emphasise to people that heat stress can affect everybody and it can be deadly – I think a lot of people don’t understand that – and that every heat-related death is preventable.”

Laura Clarke, the chief executive of the environmental law firm ClientEarth, said: “We are living through the era of climate consequences. Heatwaves, floods, drought and disease are no longer distant warnings – they’re here now. But as attribution science, climate litigation and grassroots activism grow, accountability for climate impacts is no longer a question of if but when.”

The 2025 edition of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change was led by UCL in collaboration with the World Health Organization and produced by 128 experts from more than 70 academic institutions and UN agencies.

In the past four years, the average person has been exposed to 19 days a year of life-threatening heat and 16 of those days would not have happened without human-caused global heating, the report says. Overall, exposure to high temperatures resulted in a record 639bn hours of lost labour in 2024, which caused losses of 6% of national GDP in the least developed nations.

The continued burning of fossil fuels not only heats the planet but also produces air pollution, causing millions of deaths a year. Wildfires, stoked by increasingly hot and dry conditions, are adding to the deaths caused by smoke, with a record 154,000 deaths recorded in 2024, the report says. Droughts and heatwaves damage crops and livestock and 123 million more people endured food insecurity in 2023, compared with the annual average between 1981 and 2010.

Yet there are still imbeciles (or people in the pay of fossil fuel companies) who deny that global heating is happening.

UK summer hottest on record

 From The Guardian

The UK has had its hottest summer on record, the Met Office has said, after the country faced four heatwaves in a single season.

The mean temperature for meteorological summer, which encompasses the months of June, July and August, was 16.1C (60.98F), which is significantly above the current record of 15.76C set in 2018.

All five of the hottest summers on record have now occurred since 2000 – a clear signal of the global heating that scientists say is resulting from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Met Office said it had conducted a rapid analysis that found the record-breaking summer temperatures had been made about 70 times more likely because of human-induced climate change.

Dr Mark McCarthy, the agency’s head of climate attribution, said: “In a natural climate, we could expect to see a summer like 2025 with an approximate return period of around 340 years, while in the current climate we could expect to see these sorts of summers roughly one in every five years.  Our analysis suggests that while 2025 has set a new record, we could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future climate and shows how what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate.”

The latest record beats the last by a wide margin. This year’s average temperature was just over a third of a degree hotter than 2018’s previous record, while temperatures for the other four of the five hottest summers on record differed by just hundredths of a degree. Overall the mean temperature was 1.51C above the long-term meteorological average.

June and July had hot weather, with four heatwaves including days above 30C. There has been very little rain across much of the country, with England experiencing what the government has called “nationally significant” water shortfalls. Much of England is under a hosepipe ban as reservoirs, rivers and groundwater run dry.

Although the summer has been consistently warm, there has not been extreme heat. The highest temperature recorded to date for 2025 was 35.8C in Faversham, Kent, on 1 July, well short of the UK’s all-time high of 40.3C, set in July 2022.

But in June alone there were two heatwaves, making it the hottest June on record for England and the second hottest for the UK overall. A third heatwave in July and a fourth in August pushed the overall average temperature for the summer into record-breaking territory.

Towards the end of June, scientists calculated that the heat endured by people in the south-east of England had been made 100 times more likely by the climate crisis.

Meteorologists have said this year’s consistent warmth was driven by dry ground from spring, high-pressure systems, and unusually warm seas around the UK, and minimum temperatures had been exceptionally above average.

The Met Office scientist Dr Emily Carlisle said: “These conditions have created an environment where heat builds quickly and lingers, with both maximum and minimum temperatures considerably above average.”

 

Extreme heatwaves are now normal in Spain

 ... but politicians are doing nothing.

I was too depressed to show yet another image of environmental catastrophe.
Instead, here is a picture of Madrid and its beautiful architecture.

From The Guardian

Growing up in Madrid, intense summer heat was nothing unusual. I quickly learned always to cross the street in search of shade, and never to be caught out in the sun at 3pm. But as a child in the early 1980s, I never felt dizzy after spending more than a few minutes outdoors, nor did I struggle to study or sleep at home because of the heat. Back then, air conditioning was a rarity, something only Americans had. But we were fine: the stuttering fan in my mother’s Ford Fiesta was enough to keep us comfortable on holiday escapes from the capital.

What is happening in Spain now goes far beyond discomfort. More than 1,500 deaths have already been linked to heatwaves this summer alone. Public-sector workers are collapsing from heatstroke on our city streets. Entire communities in the Madrid suburbs have been devastated by wildfires. On Monday, 198 weather stations recorded temperatures of 40C or higher. Following a record-breaking July, the first 20 days of August will probably be the warmest on record. Alongside housing, the climate crisis is Spain’s most visible and most persistent problem: every summer reminds us of this. You can’t ignore it, or escape it; so why are Spain’s politicians still so reluctant to tackle the climate emergency?

Fighting global heating is a worldwide challenge, but protecting populations against the consequences – with an awareness that Europe is heating faster than other continents – must also be a national and a local priority. Within Spain, the climate crisis too often becomes an excuse for superficial, party-political feuds. In the population at large, there has been years of broad popular consensus, but contrast that with Spain’s politicians, for whom the issue has become increasingly partisan, with the right and the left fighting over totemic policies about cars and bikes.

Even Spain’s centre-left coalition government, led by Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), has taken only modest steps to reduce emissions from industry and transport. And as they do on other issues, the socialists rush to point the finger at regional and local governments run by the conservative People’s party (PP), supported in some cases by the far-right Vox, which has pushed falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the climate crisis.

It is true that Spain’s regional and local governments, powerful and well funded, also bear great responsibility: for protecting the most vulnerable from extreme heat, adapting public spaces, planting trees and ensuring there is sufficient shade and water fountains. One urgent necessity is the creation of “cool banks”, especially for people in overcrowded and overheated homes, those with health vulnerabilities, the very young and the very old. Valencia has a network of these climate shelters, while Barcelona has mapped out hundreds of public spaces where people can escape the heat, from libraries to museums.

But too many local governments are still failing to provide respite. Madrid is among the worst offenders. Public cooling centres are almost nonexistent, and shopping centres remain the most common refuge. The capital’s conservative regional and local governments have been passive or even hostile towards public demands to reduce dangerous heat levels in neighbourhoods, with too few green spaces and too many cars. When Madrid’s city hall does spend money, it often misses the point: the most absurd example is Puerta del Sol, the central square that after months of renovation work still feels like a concrete frying pan all summer. Only after protests did the city council finally install a few flimsy shades, at a cost of €1.5m.

For those Madrileños who have the option, the traditional way to make August bearable has been to escape the city for the coast. My childhood memories of cooler summers visiting grandparents in northern Spain feel very distant now. The north still enjoys bearable nights and some rain in the summer, but heatwaves have become more frequent there too. The change is fast and visible, even in daily life.

This year in the Basque country, beach bathing has been repeatedly banned because of the portuguese man o’war, a creature resembling a jellyfish, but one that is much more toxic and dangerous. Once confined to warmer Atlantic waters, it has only begun appearing here in recent years. On a recent walk along San Sebastián’s beach, I spotted dozens, fortunately tiny, each circled in the sand to warn passersby. More medical resources and surveillance are now being devoted to this new threat – another example of the small everyday adaptations we are having to make.

The most dramatic consequences of the climate crisis make headlines around the world: the tragic deaths of workers in vulnerable jobs, picking fruit or cleaning streets, and wildfires killing people, destroying homes and even a Roman-era mining site – now a burned-out Unesco world heritage site. But across Spain, the signs are everywhere: crops ruined by hail, high-speed trains disrupted, and neighbourhoods baking in the heat.

This is the new reality we are living with. It has become a regular fixture in our calendars. A journalist colleague of mine observed earlier this year that the most important annual climate event for the media is not COP, it’s the summer. It was February in the northern hemisphere, and he was already preparing their annual heatwave coverage. My newsroom in Madrid does the same, with ever more sophisticated data and analysis.

The frustrating question is why our politicians are still shrugging off this reality, as though it were just an inconvenience. How many broken records and how many heatwave deaths will it take to change this?

Climate change is not something disastrous 20 years away.  It's happening now.  And it will only get worse, until we stop burning fossil fuels. 

Inside an oven: sweltering heat in SE Asia

From The Guardian

Extreme heat has gripped much of south and south-east Asia over recent weeks, killing dozens of people, forcing millions of students to miss school and destroying crops.

Both the Philippines and Bangladesh shut schools due to the unbearable heat last month, while governments across the region have issued health warnings. In Thailand, at least 30 people have died from heatstroke since the start of the year.


The extreme weather has seen durian fruit burst on trees in Thailand, destroyed rice crops and caused eggs to shrink, according to local media. The heat has even been cited as a factor that led to an ammunition blast in Cambodia that killed 20 soldiers at an army base last weekend.

Records have been broken across the region. Bangladesh experienced its hottest April ever recorded, with daily maximum temperatures between 2C and 8C hotter than the 33.2C average daily high for the month. In Myanmar, 48.2C was reached in the town of Chauk, in central Magway region – the hottest April temperature since records began.

In Vietnam, 102 weather stations reported record highs in April. Northern and central areas of the country experienced temperatures up to 4C higher than the same period last year, while seven stations recorded temperatures above 43C on Tuesday last week. Kolkata, in India, also reached 43C, the city’s hottest April day since 1954.

Dr Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said: “The frequency, intensity, duration and the area covered by these heatwaves are increasing over time. We are on a rollercoaster ride in terms of temperature, which is not going to come down any time soon. It’s going to be worse, which means we need to be prepared.”

Koll added that there was a need for governments to adapt – by developing policies to decide, for example, when schools should be shut or how to protect workers.

KC Libre, 15, is a student at Manuel Roxas high school in Manila, but she is currently studying at home after the school suspended in-person classes last week. “This is the first time that our classes have been suspended because of the hot weather,” she said. “We have 47 students in our class. Even with electric fans, it’s still hot, and usually there are only two electric fans switched on because ceiling fans in some of the rooms are broken.

“I feel irritated and can’t focus when it’s hot. The rooms are on the fourth floor, and so especially when I go up and down [the stairs], it’s really difficult … I won’t have even started writing yet but I’m already sweating.

“Even in our home it’s so hot. We don’t have aircon because we are not well-off. I do my school work at night because it’s less hot. In the morning, it’s as if extreme heat is blowing into you.

“The air coming from the electric fans is so hot … The heat inside of the oven … that’s what it feels like.”

Sae Klomkamnerd, 63, a farmer in Phichit province in Thailand, was forced to sell his 5,200 ducks as the extreme heat stopped them from laying eggs. “During the day, we would draw more groundwater to fill our pond, so the ducks can go in the water to cool down,” he said.

“But it’s still too hot; after 9 or 10 in the morning, the water becomes hot and they don’t want to get in any more. They just go in the shade and hide under the trees.

“In normal weather, 80-90% of the young ducks will lay eggs, but right now, when it’s so hot, it’s down to 60% or even down to 50%. In the case of the older ducks, the number of eggs is even down to 30%.”

He said the eggs the ducks did manage to lay were smaller than usual, meaning each tray of eggs weighed less and therefore fetched a lower price when sold. “I could only get 75 baht [£1.60] for those trays; in a good year, we could sell them for 100-105 baht per tray. This year is really awful, it’s really hard.”

Lay Samrach, 44, a construction worker in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, said: “I have never experienced this kind of heat. Other years were hot but this year it’s even hotter. When it’s too hot I can’t breathe.”

“Last year, we only took one break in the afternoon, but now we have up to three breaks in the afternoon because of the heat. I have to leave all my equipment in the shade. If I don’t do so it will break down my materials. Last year, I could leave my shovel out, but this year I can’t leave it out because I can’t use it if it’s so hot.”

Of course, the wealthy in these countries live in air-conditioned homes, drive in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping centres or air-conditioned offices.  They don't care about the lethal temperatures that ordinary people must face.  And they're also the people who are financing the new coal power stations that these countries are all still building, causing CO2 emissions from all the countries to just keep on rising.

Emissions in SE Asia:

Source: Our World in Data

And of course, the giant emitter in the region, India, which is however still outdone by the rest of Asia:

When I've previously pointed out how large and how fast India's emissions have been and are rising, I've been told off.  India, these people point out, is not responsible for the historic emissions produced by developed countries, who now have comfortable lifestyles, whereas Indians do not.  Which is true.  But irrelevant.  The climate does not care about history--all that matters is that now the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising: and Asia, including India, China and the rest of Asia, is now the key contributor.  Emissions in developed countries (for which the OECD is a good proxy) have been falling since 2007, though admittedly by a measly 1.2% per annum compound:

Source: Our World in Data

And in any case, if all new electricity generation came from renewables sources, emissions in these countries would grow much more slowly.   These countries are all sunbelt countries, they could all, for example, get their electricity in daytime from solar, and at night from coal, more than halving their emissions from electricity.  Building new solar farms instead of new coal power stations would be cheaper than new coal power stations.  

China's emissions set for structural decline

From The Guardian

China’s carbon emissions could peak this year before falling into a structural decline for the first time from next year after a record surge in clean energy investments, according to research.

Emissions from the world’s most polluting country have rebounded this year after the Chinese government dropped its Covid restrictions in January, according to analysis undertaken for Carbon Brief.

However, this rebound in fossil fuel demand emerged alongside a historic expansion of the country’s low-carbon energy sources, which was far in excess of policymakers’ targets and expectations.

Beijing’s solar and wind installation targets for the year were met by September, according to the report, and the market share of electric vehicles is already well ahead of the government’s 20% target for 2025. [Update in January 2025: EVs and PHEVs now make up >50% of total car sales in China]

“These record additions are all but guaranteed to push fossil-fuel electricity generation and CO2 emissions into decline in 2024,” Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the author of the report.

The most striking growth has been in solar power, according to Myllyvirta. Solar installations increased by 210 gigawatts (GW) this year alone, which is twice the total solar capacity of the US and four times what China added in 2020.

The analysis, which is based on official figures and commercial data, found that China installed 70GW of wind power this year – more than the entire power generation capacity of the UK. It is also expected to add 7GW of hydro power and 3GW of nuclear power capacity this year, said the report.

Myllyvirta said the boom in clean energy generation could trigger a decline in China’s emissions from next year despite a wave of new coal plants across the country.

“This is because – for the first time – the rate of low-carbon energy expansion is now sufficient to not only meet, but exceed the average annual increase in China’s demand for electricity overall,” he said.

“If this pace is maintained, or accelerated, it would mean that China’s electricity generation from fossil fuels would enter a period of structural decline – which would also be a first. Moreover, this structural decline could come about despite the new wave of coal plant permitting and construction in the country,” Myllyvirta added.

China had 136GW of coal power capacity already under construction at the end of June, with a further 99GW with planning permits. Another 25GW has been permitted since then, according to the research, which would breach a policy pledge made by the country’s president, Xi Jinping, to “strictly control new coal-fired power generation projects”.

China has forecast that its coal power capacity will peak at 1,370GW in 2030, which would require either an immediate end to new coal power permits, or an accelerated shutdown of existing and planned coal plants, said Myllyvirta.

So, first off, how can Carbon Brief be so confident, given the surge in new coal power stations?  

During the 2022 extreme drought in China (ironically worsened by climate change) there were power shortages as hydro generation collapsed and demand for air-conditioning zoomed.  The Chinese authorities responded by unfreezing coal power station planning requests.  But these new coal power stations were to be back-ups for nuclear, hydro, wind and solar.  Capacity utilisation in coal generation in China is already below 50% (the norm is 70-90%) and the majority of coal power stations are loss-making.  But that doesn't matter in China's system.  Unlike power stations and the grid in other countries, China's power stations don't have to make a profit.  They're seen as a public service.  And widespread, lasting power failures are seen as unacceptable, more unacceptable than loss-making power stations.   For example, you could run the grid using solar during the day and coal at night (which, if you think about it, would halve emissions).  Of course, this makes coal power even more expensive, because the plants are only being used for half the day.  In Australia, that dynamic is pushing coal power stations towards bankruptcy; in China, it doesn't really matter.

Second, if China's emissions have peaked, that would mean that global emissions have peaked too.

Look at the chart below.   This includes all emissions except land use change (i.e., clearing forests for food.)  Europe's emissions peaked in 1990 and are back where they were in 1965.  US emissions peaked in 2006, and are back where they were in 1988.  But China's and India's emissions, by contrast, have exploded.  This is because they are rapidly growing economies, and until recently coal was the cheapest source of electricity.  Most of the rise in emissions over the last few decades has been because of China.  So, even if China's emissions only fall slowly, global emissions will have peaked.  (It would help if India's emissions also peaked, but that seems unlikely just yet.)  And if China's emissions start to fall, the excuse offered up by denialists that 'why should we do anything when China isn't?' will be invalidated.

This isn't unmitigated good news.  The rise in global temperatures is proportional to the level of global emissions.  To halve the decadal rise in emissions (currently 0.2 degrees, but showing ominous signs of having increased to 0.28 degrees) we need to halve emissions.  

Let's say global emissions fall by 3% a year.  This will reduce emissions by just 25% over the next 10 years, 45% over 20 years.  Not enough to prevent 2 degrees of warming.  5% a year would reduce emissions by 40% over 10 years, and 80% over 30 years.  That's a lot better, but still far from ideal.  The prospective decline in emissions, though very welcome, just isn't fast enough.  Yet. (To reduce emissions by 90% by 2050, they would have to fall by ~8% per annum.)

Source:  Our World in Data

Summer of 2023 hottest ever recorded

From The Guardian  (Of course, they're referring to the Northern Hemisphere summer--the Southern Hemisphere summer, which begins in November, will likely also be much hotter than normal.)

The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded, as the climate crisis and emerging El Niño pushed up temperatures and drove extreme weather across the world.

In June, July and August – the northern hemisphere summer – the global average temperature reached 16.77C, which was 0.66C above the 1991 to 2020 average. The new high is 0.29C above the previous record set in 2019, a big jump in climate terms.

The data, from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), showed that August was about 1.5C warmer than the preindustrial average for 1850 to 1900, although the goal of the world’s nations to keep global heating below 1.5C will be considered broken only when this temperature is sustained over months and years.

Heatwaves, fires and floods have destroyed lives and livelihoods across the globe, from North and South America, to Europe, India, Japan and China.

“Our planet has just endured a season of simmering – the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun,” said the UN secretary general, António Guterres. “Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash. Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope with, with extreme weather events hitting every corner of the planet.”

The oceans have been especially hot in recent months. The C3S data showed that for every day in August, global average sea surface temperatures beat the previous record set in March 2016, which was also an El Niño year. North Atlantic Ocean temperatures reached a new record of 25.19C on 31 August. Antarctic sea ice extent has also been extremely low for the time of year.

Samantha Burgess, at C3S, said: “Global temperature records continue to tumble in 2023, with the warmest August following on from the warmest July and June, leading to the warmest boreal summer in our data record going back to 1940.” The findings are based on computer analysis of billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.

Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, said: “Breaking heat records has become the norm in 2023. Global warming continues because we have not stopped burning fossil fuels. It is that simple.skip past newsletter promotion

“Studies by World Weather Attribution have shown that climate change has dramatically intensified some of the most devastating weather disasters in the summer of 2023. The hot, dry and windy conditions that fuelled the wildfires in Quebec Canada were made at least twice as likely because of climate change. The extreme heatwaves that impacted Europe and North America were made 2.0-2.5C hotter because of climate change.”

The human-caused climate crisis was undeniably to blame for the deadly heatwaves that struck Europe and the US in July. Both would have been virtually impossible without the global heating driven by burning fossil fuels, scientists found.

In August, the Guardian interviewed 45 of the world’s leading climate scientists, who said that the increased heating seen in 2023 was completely in line with the predictions they had been making for decades. They said the effects were more severe than expected due to communities being more vulnerable than anticipated, making efforts to protect people more urgent than ever.

World experiences hottest week ever recorded

From The Guardian

The world has just gone through a remarkable experience. It endured the hottest week ever recorded between 3-10 July this year. And meteorologists say there is more to come – a lot more.

Soaring levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and an unusual band of strong winds that have hovered high over the Atlantic have already triggered heatwaves in Texas, Greece, Spain, Italy, and a host of other nations.

Red weather alerts have been issued across Europe; wildfires are raging in Croatia, on the Adriatic coast, and in Navarra in Spain; while tourist targets such as the Acropolis have been closed as temperatures have soared into the forties.

The Earth has not experienced anything like it since instrumental measures of air temperatures began in the 1850s, the World Meteorological Organisation revealed last week. “We are in uncharted territory and that is worrying news for the planet,” said Prof Christopher Hewitt, the WMO’s director of climate services.

This point was backed by Karsten Haustein, a research fellow in atmospheric radiation at Leipzig University. “The chances are that the month of July will be the hottest month ever … ‘ever’ meaning since the Eemian [interglacial period], which is some 120,000 years ago.”

On top of the triggers of the current record-breaking heatwaves, a growing El Niño event in the Pacific is beginning to make its presence felt across the globe.

El Niño is a periodic climatic event that occurs when the circulation of the equatorial Pacific Ocean shifts and its temperature rises, causing knock-on heat impacts around the world.

“A typical El Niño temporarily adds about 0.2C to average global temperature,” said Jeff Knight, manager of climate variability modelling, for the Met Office.

“This increase is dwarfed by the 1.2C that we have seen from climate change since the Industrial Revolution but added to that human-induced warming, a new global temperature record is still likely to be set before the end of next year.”

As a result, many scientists warn that this year or next could see world temperatures pass the 1.5C threshold that was set by the IPCC as being the upper limit for a rise in global warming that would avoid the planet passing through meteorological tipping points that could bring irreversible changes to world weather patterns.

The consequences of a new record heatwave occurring very soon will be profound and dangerous, add scientists. More than 61,000 people are now estimated to have died as a result of the soaring temperatures that gripped Europe last summer.

Given the likelihood of that record being broken this year – or next year at the latest – there is a strong chance that 2022’s grim death toll will be topped very soon with Mediterranean nations such as Greece, Spain and Italy likely to suffer the worst consequences.

According to UN secretary general António Guterres “climate change is out of control”. He warned that if the world persisted in delaying key measures needed to limit fossil fuel emissions, it would move “into a catastrophic situation”.

Many scientists have reacted to this alarm with rueful resignation. They have warned for more than 30 years that continued burning of fossil fuels would trigger the heatwaves that we are now experiencing.

“We should not be at all surprised with the high global temperatures,” Prof Richard Betts, climate scientist at the Met Office and University of Exeter, told the BBC. “This is all a stark reminder of what we’ve known for a long time, and we will see ever-more extremes until we stop building up more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

A man stands in a road near flames ifrom a wildfire in Moreno Valley in Riverside County, California, on 14 July. Photograph: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images

And still we do far, far too little to slash emissions.  

Pacific Northwest heatwave shatters records

From Axios

A stifling heat wave enveloping the Pacific Northwest and western Canada is expected to expand this week, threatening more temperature records.

The weather map looks "strongly reminiscent" of late June 2021, which produced a deadly excessive heat event in the Pacific Northwest, experts say.However, there are some key exceptions, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a climate video briefing Monday.
Swain adds that this time, the center of the heat dome — an area of unusually strong high pressure aloft — is located over southwestern Canada, instead of over the northwestern U.S.

This heatwave is occurring during mid-May rather than late-June, which makes the background temperatures cooler and the records lower.That's fortunate for the affected regions, since temperatures have been about 20 to 30°F above average for this time of year, and will continue to be about 15°F to 25°F this week.

Still, the heat wave has already broken numerous daily and monthly high temperature records in Oregon and Washington, and this heat is forecast to spread east across the Great Basin this week, the National Weather Service (NWS) noted Tuesday in a forecast discussion.On Sunday, Hoquiam, Washington hit a monthly record high at 91°F, while Quillayute's 92°F tied its monthly record.
On Monday, Seattle had a fourth day in a row with a record high, per the NWS.

Some of the Canadian records have been especially noteworthy. For example, based on preliminary data, the small town of Arviat, Nunavut, which sits along the western edge of chilly Hudson Bay, recorded its all-time May high temperature record on May 13, when the temperature climbed to 21.2°C (70.2°F).This was about 7°C (12.6°F) above the previous May record, an unusually large margin for a monthly record.

Numerous records have been broken in British Columbia, where the heat is likely to continue through midweek.

A monthly record was set in Lytton on Sunday, where the temperature climbed to 35.9°C (96.6°F). Normally cool Tofino, located on a Peninsula on Vancouver Island, also set a monthly high Sunday, at 28.3°C (83°F).

In Canada, the heat has exacerbated the already above average start to the wildfire season, with large blazes burning out of control in multiple provinces. About 90 wildfires were burning in Alberta alone as of Sunday.  Other wildfires are burning out of control in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
Some Canadian oil production has been curtailed due to the fires in Alberta, and smoke has moved south of the border, prompting air quality alerts in Minnesota.

Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Axios that it is unusual to have another significant, record-breaking heat event so soon, in virtually the same region, as the June 2021 event.

"I realize that the two events are completely independent, but it is still a surprise," he said via email.

He cited published research showing that human-caused climate change has made the high temperatures during this and many other heat waves at least 3°F to 5°F hotter.

A slew of other studies show climate change is causing heat waves to be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting.

A climate attribution study on the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave found that it would have been "virtually impossible" to have occurred without climate change.

 

What's that you say?  There is no such thing as global warming?

Record ocean temperatures

 From The Guardian

Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.

The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days.

The world is thought to be on the brink of an El Niño weather event this year – a cyclical weather system in the Pacific, that has a warming impact globally. But the El Niño system is yet to develop, so this oscillation cannot explain the recent rapid heating, at a time of year when ocean temperatures are normally declining from their annual March and April peaks.

Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has got scientists scratching their heads. The fact that it is warming as much as it has been is a real surprise, and very concerning. It could be a short-lived extreme high, or it could be the start of something much more serious.”

Warming oceans are a concern for many reasons. Seawater takes up more space at higher temperatures, accelerating sea level rise, and warmer water at the poles accelerates the melting of the ice caps. Hotter temperatures can also be dire for marine ecosystems, as it can be difficult or impossible for species to adapt. Corals in particular can suffer devastating bleaching.

Some scientists fear that the rapid warming could be a sign of the climate crisis progressing at a faster rate than predicted. The oceans have acted as a kind of global buffer to the climate crisis over recent decades, both by absorbing vast amounts of the carbon dioxide that we have poured into the atmosphere, and by storing about 90% of the excess energy and heat this has created, dampening some of the impacts of global heating on land. Some scientists fear we could be reaching the limit of the oceans’ capacity to absorb these excesses.

Mark Maslin, professor of Earth system science at University College London, said the climate crisis was taking hold before our eyes. “Climate scientists were shocked by the extreme weather events in 2021,” he said. “Many hoped this was just an extreme year. But they continued into 2022 and now they are occurring in 2023. It seems we have moved to a warmer climate system with frequent extreme climate events and record-breaking temperatures that are the new normal. It is difficult to see how anyone can deny climate change is happening and having devastating effects around the world.”

Note that this is before the impact of El Niño, which is forecast to occur later this year.  

India experiences hottest February ever

From The BBC

India is likely to face a blistering summer after recording its hottest February since 1901, its weather department has said.  Average maximum temperature was 29.5C in February, the highest since India started keeping proper weather records.  The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has also forecast "enhanced probability" of heatwaves between March and May.  Prolonged heat could affect wheat production and push up power demand.

"Above normal maximum temperatures are likely over most parts of northeast India, east and central India and some parts of northwest India" from March to May, the IMD said in a statement on Tuesday.

The forecast comes days after the weather department issued and later withdrew its first heatwave alert for the year in parts of western India after conditions improved.

Hot summers and heatwaves are common in India, especially in May and June. But like last year, summer seems set to begin earlier this year - last March was India's hottest since 1901.  Experts have also said that India is now experiencing more intense, frequent heatwaves that are longer in duration.

Last year, India was forced to ban wheat exports after unseasonably hot weather affected the crop, sending local prices soaring.  In February, the federal government set up a committee to monitor the impact of high temperatures on this year's harvest. Reuters had cited an unnamed government official as saying at the time that "the current crop condition looks good".  India is the world's second biggest wheat producer.

The unusually high temperatures had also triggered a spike in power demand last year, leading to outages in many states.  This year too, demand for electricity has already reached near-record levels in recent weeks, Bloomberg reported.

Many experts have also been raising concerns about the effect of extreme heat on poor people, who often have to work outside and less access to resources to help them stay cool. 

"Heatwaves can have serious health consequences. If temperatures are high even at night, the body doesn't get a chance to recuperate, increasing the possibility of illnesses and higher medical bills," Dr Chandni Singh, an environmental scientist, told the BBC last year.

India saw a 55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021, according to a study published last year in the medical journal, The Lancet.

Extreme China heatwave

It's obvious.  We don't have to wait until 2030 to see the effects of the climate emergency.  They're happening right now.

From the New Zealand Herald

Cars. Batteries. Solar panels. Food. Global shortages and soaring prices are almost certain as China's seemingly never-ending heatwave sears on.

It's the most extreme heat event ever recorded in world history. For more than 70 days, the intense heat has blasted China's population, factories and fields. Lakes and rivers have dried up. Crops have been killed. Factories have been closed.

More than 900 million people across 17 Chinese provinces are subjected to record-breaking conditions. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been topping 40C.

In the Sichuan city of Dazhou, an air raid shelter has been converted into a heat refuge. In Chongqing, subway stations are opening to offer subterranean recovery stops.

But the extreme heat and dry weather are having far-reaching effects.

Energy, water, and food supplies are being hit across the country. Rivers are drying up. Dams are emptying. Hydroelectric plants are shutting down.

That means factories are being closed to divert available electricity towards residential use.

In the fields, crops and animals are wilting – as are their human tenders. Hundreds of thousands of acres have already been seared, with serious worldwide repercussions expected on food supplies and prices – especially vegetables and grains.

Signs of things to come

The Sichuan megacity of Chongqing, home to some 30 million people, reached a top of 45C on August 18. On August 20, the city's overnight minimum bottomed out at 34.9C.

These are the highest temperatures China has recorded outside the occupied desert province of Xinjiang.

"There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China," weather historian Maximiliano Herrera told New Scientist. "This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time."

Electricity demand for cooling has spiked at the same time production has plummeted.


Not enough water is flowing through hydroelectric power turbines. Nuclear power plants are struggling to keep their reactors cool.

Chinese sources state some 66 rivers have dried up completely. And parts of the critical Yangtze river systems are at a third of their normal levels – the lowest since records began 150 years ago.

This has been a particular problem in Sichuan province. It gets some 80 per cent of its electricity from hydropower. Now thousands of factories have been ordered to close. Offices and shopping centres have been instructed to cut lighting and set airconditioning temperatures higher.

But the effect of low water levels extends far beyond this.

Shipping cargo routes are blocked. Long-lost Buddhist statues are being exposed among the drying mud. And drinking water is being rationed.

Supply chains broken

Among the global corporate players affected by the Sichuan shutdown are car manufacturers Toyota, Volkswagen and Tesla. It's home to major Intel and Apple assembly plants, as well as the world's largest battery maker, Amperex Technology. The region is also a significant producer of the globally critical mineral lithium and polysilicon solar panels.


Toyota has reportedly resumed some production by acquiring a large-scale diesel generator. But, in Shanghai, Tesla has been forced to appeal to local authorities to be exempted from power restrictions to maintain its supply of electric vehicle components.

The trickle-down effects will extend globally.

Lithium prices are soaring: China has long cornered the market.

And many of the technologies needed to combat the climate crisis exacerbating China's woes will now likely become much more expensive and harder to find.

But the most immediate problem will be food.

Parched crops on the bank of the Yangtze River, which is approaching record-low water levels during the drought in Chongqing. Photo: Reuters

U.S. cities boil under deadly extreme temperatures

From CBS News

This summer's deadly heat waves have left people throughout the U.S. and Europe desperate for relief. It's urban centers that have felt the intense temperatures the most — and where experts say it's only expected to get worse.

That's because of something called the urban heat island effect.

"Simply put, it means that urban centers are hotter than the surrounding suburban areas," Liv Yoon, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia University's Climate School, told CBS News. She explained that the effect is like a "dome overarching the city" that's created by carbon emissions, air getting trapped amid tall buildings, and a lack of open space and greenery, among other things.

"All of that is building and building and it has nowhere to escape," she said.

This dome effect can cascade over entire cities, although it also impacts specific neighborhoods within that urban area very differently. According to the recently launched heat.gov website, neighborhoods in the same city can have temperatures differing by roughly 15º to 20ºF at the same time depending on their levels of tree cover and and other factors.

Pretty much every metropolitan area experiences this effect to some degree. About 85% of the U.S. population currently lives in metro areas, and a the heat island effect is felt most intensely in New Orleans, New York City, Houston, San Francisco and Newark, New Jersey, according to a 2021 report by the nonprofit Climate Central.

"Today, there are over 200 to 250 million people that experience temperatures of over 35ºC [95ºF] every summer, living in about 318 urban areas" across the U.S., environmental scientist and climate resilience specialist Deborah Brosnan said. "So, it's a lot of people experiencing it."

Yoon, the heat island researcher, is part of a project participating in a nationwide campaign by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to "make heat visible." Teams in various U.S. cities — including Yoon's in New York City — have been tracking temperatures to show the impact of excessive heat and the heat island effect.

A map of their findings in New York shows how by the afternoon and evening, the heat index is substantially higher in the neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Harlem and the South Bronx when compared to the Upper East Side, Central Park and the Upper West Side.

"Within a city, just because there's a heat wave going on, no one's experiencing that the same exact way everywhere," Jeremy Hoffman, an environmental science professor and scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia, told CBS News.

In his own research in Richmond, Hoffman's team found a 16ºF difference between the coolest and warmest places — less than 3 miles apart — at the exact same time during a heat wave.

The phenomenon isn't confined to summer heat waves. It's year-round.

"Urban areas tend to be several degrees warmer than their outlying rural areas throughout the year," Hoffman said. "That tends to be actually kind of a good thing for our energy needs in the wintertime, but in the summertime … when it's on our hottest days with the brightest sunshine, the least amount of wind and the least amount of cloud cover, these conditions tend to become the recipe for these extreme temperature difference to become the most stark."

Ben Zaitchik, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University, told CBS News that urban heat lingers, and is usually maximized, at night. The sustained high temperatures prevent people from getting relief when their bodies desperately need it.

The negative impact extends beyond sheer discomfort. Areas with extreme and prolonged heat see increased cases of kids with asthma going to the emergency room, older adults with chronic lung issues having complications, and decreased worker productivity because of heat exhaustion, Zaitchik said. It can also be deadly.

"There's a literal, physiological limit, which is that once you get above a certain threshold of temperature and humidity, you can't sweat," he said. The body's internal temperature is about 98.6ºF, but without the ability to sweat, the body can't cool down, and body temperature can rapidly increase to 106ºF or more within 10 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"At that point, you're really kind of incompatible with human life," he said.

According to the CDC, high temperatures can lead to heart and lung complications, renal failure and kidney stones, and can even impact fetal health and lead to preterm birth.

Every year in the U.S., the heat causes an average of more than 700 deaths, more than 67,500 emergency department visits and more than 9,200 hospitalizations. Those who are Black or Native American have the highest rates of death, according to CDC tracking from 2004 to 2018.

Yoon has seen these health issues in New York, where she specifically researches the social inequities associated with extreme heat. She said that areas with more extreme heat tend to see the most heat-related deaths and illnesses, and also tend to be communities with lower income that are historically redlined.

Even in neighborhoods where the heat difference isn't necessarily drastic, the impact can be more intense because there are fewer buffers. On the Upper East Side, for example, Yoon found that more people are likely to have climate-controlled homes or offices and have jobs consistent with good quality health care.

That's not the case just a few miles away in the Bronx.

"People are supposed to seek refuge from the heat indoors," Yoon said. "But if you live in dilapidated housing or public housing, they're notorious for their lack of cooling infrastructure. You just have nowhere to go, so extreme heat becomes even more of a problem."

Most of those who live in the Bronx are people of color, according to the U.S. Census, and the issues the borough experiences with heat echo those in similar communities nationwide.

Brosnan said that areas of lower socioeconomic status and higher populations of people of color usually have "significantly higher" heat indexes. They also usually have more air pollution, fewer green spaces, are often closer to traffic or factories, and have less cooling infrastructure.

"If you're a single mother, if you're from a minority race, you are more likely to experience heat stress and to be affected by extreme heat or heat waves than people in more affluent or larger percentage White areas," she said. "And that's the real issue, is that the impact of rising temperatures is borne disproportionately by the poor and minorities and those who can least afford to pay for them."

Since 1970, 96% of the 246 locations analyzed by Climate Central have seen increases in their average summer temperatures.

"Now versus just 50, 60 years ago," Hoffman said, "our summers are much hotter, much more intense."

The hotter temperatures are not just a danger to public health, but to infrastructure as well, he said. It's particularly noticeable in regions that were historically cooler but over the past few years have been sweltering under unprecedented heat.

"There is a very high level of danger right now, for vulnerable groups in particular," Weather Channel meteorologist Carl Parker told CBS News.

When last year's Pacific Northwest heat wave hit, he said as an example, only two-thirds of households in the region had air conditioning. As of 2020, 12% of U.S. households didn't have air conditioning, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and of those who do, just 66% have central AC.

Described by the National Weather Service as "oppressive and unprecedented heat," the wave brought record-breaking temperatures to the region, resulting in buckled highways and numerous deaths.

That area was among many that experienced yet another deadly surge in heat this summer.

"Now, suddenly, you're looking at days on end with temperatures above 100 degrees," Parker said. "That's when it gets really dangerous, when you don't have this sort of built-in infrastructure. And then even when you do have this infrastructure, sometimes it will fail."

"Roads begin to buckle," Hoffman said. "Airlines can't operate because they're unable to take off in such warm air."

"We see things like rolling blackouts," he added, "because so many people are needing to push their air conditioning beyond what they're kind of used to dealing with."

And when the infrastructure crumbles, it only compounds on the existing issues, Zaitchik said, pointing to last August's deadly Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm that trampled numerous states.

"When you look at New Orleans, where it hit landfall, the heat killed more people than the storm itself," he said, "because the storm knocked out power and then it got really hot and then people died."

The past few years have shown that excessive heat is a nationwide — and global — issue. Utah residents recently had more than two weeks straight of triple-digit temperatures, and last month, the U.K. hit its hottest day on record at more than 104ºF.

"No city is immune to this," Yoon said. "...It's becoming more of a problem. One, temperatures are getting hotter, but two, more and more people are congregating in urban centers. So, it's becoming more of an issue everywhere."

Parker told CBS News that by mid-century, major cities such as Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tampa and New Orleans, will see a month or more with heat index values of 105ºF or greater. That's less than 30 years from now. And these urban areas, where the heat is most intense, are only growing.

"As bad as it will be, in general, it's going to be that much worse in these urban areas. … By the middle of the century, somewhere between 60 and 70% of the world's population will be in urban areas," Parker said. "… And that's gonna mean a lot of dangerous weather for millions and millions of people."

Population density will only add to the heat. And a recent report by the nonprofit research firm First Street Foundation found that a "heat belt" will soon emerge in the U.S., stretching from the Gulf Coast to Chicago and encompassing nearly one-third of U.S. adults.

"We're already operating on a knife's edge in a lot of ways," Parker said. "... So the big question will be adaptation — do city planners really start thinking about what they need to do to make cities more livable as temperatures are rising?"

This image shows how the temperature can differ between rural, industrial, downtown, park and suburban areas on the same day. CLIMATE CENTRAL

The River Loire almost dries out

 This river, normally wide and full, is virtually empty because of the extreme drought in France.

Is climate change causing the heatwave?

A resident uses a bucket of water to put out embers on olive trees in Ourem, Portugal last week.   -   Copyright  PEDRO ROCHA / AFP

From Euronews.Green

For hundreds of millions of people in Europe, unbearably hot weather has been driving the reality of climate change home over the last month.

Temperatures in the UK hit 40C for the first time in recorded history, while France, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Croatia have been battling wildfires for days or even weeks.

We know that global warming is the cause and experts have said that the UK's recent record temperatures were made 10 times more likely by climate change. It’s a straightforward connection to make during a heatwave.

Despite this, dangerous climate sceptics are still being published in national newspapers, bending over backwards to claim it’s because the Earth is moving closer to the sun.

So if you’re feeling a little hazy on the science, or need some points to persuade the climate inactive in your life, we’ve got you covered.

The planet’s average temperature has risen by 1.1C since pre-industrial levels, largely because of the huge increase in greenhouse gases human activity have unleashed. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the biggest contributor to global warming; its concentration in the atmosphere has soared by 48 per cent between 1750 to 2020.

Like glass in a greenhouse, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases trap the sun’s heat, causing less warmth to return to space.

As average temperatures rise - ever closer to the 1.5C mark which will be disastrous for many countries - the amount of weather at the ‘extremely hot’ end of the spectrum increases, making extreme heat events more frequent, longer, and more intense.

According to a recent expert study, a heatwave that would have had a one in 10 chance of occurring in any given year in the pre-industrial climate will now occur almost three times more frequently on average and be 1.2C hotter. A heatwave that would have struck one in 50 times will strike five times more often.

“I think we can very confidently say that every heatwave occurring today has been made more intense and more likely because of climate change,” said co-author Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the UK’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.

In other words, we no longer need to wait for ‘attribution studies’ to prove that climate change is making heat events worse. Such research is still really valuable, however.

A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that the heatwave which destroyed a Canadian village last summer - after a record-breaking 49.6C was followed by wildfire - was made 150 times more likely by climate change. It would have been “virtually impossible” without it, the climatologists concluded. Those who returned to rebuild Lytton were again evacuated last week.

The UK's recent record breaking heatwave in July was also made at least 10 times more likely by climate change, according to experts. The team at WWA adds that this is a conservative estimate as temperatures have risen higher than climate models simulate.

Dr Mariam Zachariah, who also works at the Grantham Institute and WWA, says “there have been so many extreme events happening this year, it has become difficult to look at every one.”

Focussing on events that have been most impactful to people and agriculture is a key part of climate communication, however.

WWA chose the UK for its most recent study because it is "particularly unaccustomed to very high temperatures as the ones that we have seen last week," according to Friederike Otto, a senior climate science lecturer at Imperial College London.

Temperatures recorded at two of the sites the group analysed would have been "statically impossible" if the world hadn't seen 1.2C of warming since the late 1800s, the study says.

Despite the alarming data sets she handles, Dr Zachariah tells Euronews Green, “the message is that we have to start acting, and I do have a lot of hope for us; if we act in time we can do enough to adapt and mitigate climate change for the future.”