WMO performs rigorous objective functions in the public interest

From an Article by Matt McGrath, BBC News Report, July 9, 2020

The World Meteorological Organisation says there’s a growing chance that global temperatures will break the 1.5C threshold over the next five years, compared to pre-industrial levels.

It says there’s a 20% possibility the critical mark will be broken in any one year before 2024. But the assessment says there’s a 70% chance it will be broken in one or more months in those five years. Scientists say that keeping below 1.5C will avoid the worst climate impacts.

The target was agreed by world leaders in the 2015 Paris climate accord. They committed to pursue efforts to try to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.

This new assessment, carried out by the UK’s Met Office for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), says there’s a growing chance that this level will be breached.

Researchers say that the Earth’s average annual temperature is already more than 1C higher than it was in the 1850s – and will probably stay around this level over the next five years. Previous studies had put the short-term chances of going above 1.5C at 10% – that’s now doubled say the climate modellers, and it’s increasing with time.

Some parts of the world will feel this rising heat more than others, with the scientists saying that the Arctic will probably warm by twice the global average this year. They also predict that over the coming five years there will be more storms over western Europe thanks to rising sea levels.

World edges closer to breaking 1.5°C temperature rise threshold:

> 20% chance average annual temperatures increase +1.5°C by 2024

> 70% chance 1.5°C threshold broken in one or more months by 2024

> 1.5° C threshold uses pre-industrial temperatures as a comparison

World Meteorological Organization (assessment does not take into account fall in CO2 emissions due to coronavirus pandemic)

The assessment considers natural variability as well as the impact of carbon emissions from human activities – however the models don’t take account of the fall-off in CO2 emissions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The WMO says this is unlikely to affect temperatures in the early 2020s.

“The WMO has repeatedly stressed that the industrial and economic slowdown from Covid-19 is not a substitute for sustained and co-ordinated climate action,” said Prof Petteri Taalas, the WMO’s secretary general. “Due to the very long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the impact of the drop in emissions this year is not expected to lead to a reduction of CO2 atmospheric concentrations which are driving global temperature increases.

“Whilst Covid-19 has caused a severe international health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems and economies for centuries. Governments should use the opportunity to embrace climate action as part of recovery programmes and ensure that we grow back better,” he said.

If the 1.5C threshold is broken in one of the coming years, the experts stress it won’t mean the targets are invalid. However it will, once again, underline the urgency of significant emissions cuts to prevent a long-term move to this more dangerous, warmer world.

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See also: “Siberian Arctic ‘up to 18 F degrees warmer’ in June,” Justin Rowlatt, BBC News Report, July 7, 2020

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See also: Even if we start to fix climate change, the proof may not show up for 30 years – The Washington Post, Chris Mooney & Brady Dennis, July 7, 2020 — New findings put a brief emissions drop during the coronavirus pandemic into perspective

Antarctica hit 65 degrees, the highest ever recorded

From an Article by Matthew Cappucci, Washington Post, February 7, 2020

Just days after the Earth saw its warmest January on record, Antarctica has broken its warmest temperature ever recorded. A reading of 65 degrees was taken Thursday at Esperanza Base along Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, making it the ordinarily frigid continent’s highest measured temperature in history.

The Argentine research base is on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Randy Cerveny, who tracks extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, called Thursday’s reading a “likely record,” although the mark will still have to be officially reviewed and certified.

The balmy reading beats out the previous record of 63.5 degrees, which occurred March 24, 2015.

The Antarctic Peninsula, on which Thursday’s anomaly was recorded, is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. In just the past 50 years, temperatures have surged a staggering 5 degrees in response to Earth’s swiftly warming climate. Around 87 percent of glaciers along the peninsula’s west coast have retreated in that time, the majority doing so at an accelerated pace since 2008.

The WMO notes that cracks in the Pine Island Glacier “have been growing rapidly” in the past several days, according to satellite imagery.

The recent spate of warmth owes to a ridge of high pressure that has lingered over the region for several days. High-pressure systems feature sinking air, which favors milder temperatures. This effect was amplified on a local level because of a “foehn” wind, characterized by air sweeping down a mountain that begins compressing as air pressures rise near the Earth’s surface. That causes additional warming.

Moreover, a look at simulated atmospheric profiles around the time it hit the record indicated warmer air aloft than at the surface — meaning any air that mixed down to ground level could have had an additional leg up in warming.

It’s been an eventful year for climate extremes, and we’re only on Day 38 of 2020. January was the warmest on record globally, according to atmospheric monitoring group Copernicus, with records shattered in Europe and Asia. A number of locales in Eastern Europe and particularly Russia wound up more than 12 to 13 degrees above average.

“[This record] doesn’t come as any surprise,” wrote Eric Steig, a glaciologist studying climate change at the University of Washington. “Although there is decade-to-decade variability, the underlying trend across most of the continent is warming.”

He says this record will probably be broken again in the not-so-distant future. “That warming has been particularly fast on the Antarctic Peninsula — where Esperanza is — in summer (the season [they’re] now in),” Steig wrote. “So we can expect these sorts of records to be set again and again, even if they aren’t set every single year.”

David Bromwich, a climate researcher at Ohio State University, noted, however, that while the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed strongly since the late 1940s, temperature trends in summer have been variable in recent decades, including a brief cooling spell since 1998. “So overall, this record looks to be a one time extreme event that doesn’t tell us anything about Antarctic climate change,” he wrote in an email.

Additional extreme warmth is likely in the Antarctic Peninsula in the coming days. Temperatures some 40 to 50 degrees above normal are predicted by some models.

>>> Matthew Cappucci is a meteorologist for Capital Weather Gang. He earned a B.A. in atmospheric sciences from Harvard University in 2019, and has contributed to The Washington Post since he was 18.

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See also: Antarctica — Changes in thickness and sea level, 1992 to 2017

This animation illustrates changes in thickness and sea level contribution due to Antarctica between 1992 and 2017.

Twenty hottest years in past 22 years! OMG!

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, November 29, 2018

This year 2018 will likely be the fourth hottest year on record, according to the United Nations’ authoritative voice for weather and climate. The three years that were warmer? 2016, 2015 and 2017.

Furthermore, the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Thursday in its 2018 State of the Climate report.

The new report, based on five independently maintained global temperature data sets, adds ever more proof that global warming is unequivocal—and we’d better act now to reverse this alarming trend.

Unfortunately, the current pace of international government action is “insufficient” to limit warming, the UN Environment Programme warned yesterday in its 2018 Emissions Gap Report. In fact, the annual assessment found that after a three-year decline, heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions actually increased to “historic levels” of 53.5 billion tonnes in 2017, with no signs of peaking.

“We are not on track to meet climate change targets and rein in temperature increases,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said today in a press release. “Greenhouse gas concentrations are once again at record levels and if the current trend continues we may see temperature increases 3-5°C by the end of the century.”

Taalas stressed that exploitation of fossil fuels will push temperature rise “considerably higher.”

“It is worth repeating once again that we are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it,” he said.

Scientists have already warned that 2019 could be an unusually warm year due to a forecasted El Niño, which could cause extreme weather and temperature spikes.

The new State of the Climate report shows that temperatures for the first ten months of 2018 were nearly 1°C above the pre-industrial baseline from 1850-1900.

Last month’s widely disseminated climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that average global temperatures between 2006-2015 were 0.86°C above the pre-industrial baseline. In the last five years, 2014-2018, it was 1.04°C above the pre-industrial baseline.

“These are more than just numbers,” said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Elena Manaenkova in today’s press release.

“Every fraction of a degree of warming makes a difference to human health and access to food and fresh water, to the extinction of animals and plants, to the survival of coral reefs and marine life,” she added. “It makes a difference to economic productivity, food security, and to the resilience of our infrastructure and cities. It makes a difference to the speed of glacier melt and water supplies, and the future of low-lying islands and coastal communities. Every extra bit matters.”

The WMO report comes just days before the critical climate summit COP24 in Katowice, Poland, where delegates from roughly 200 countries will create a “rulebook” on how to implement the 2015 Paris agreement to avoid disastrous climate change.

The Paris accord aims to keep global temperature rise this century to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and has a more aspirational target to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.