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global heating
'Extraordinary' Antarctic Heatwave Puts Temps 50°F Above Normal
The long-lasting heatwave is an "eye-opening sign that climate change is starting to really transform the planet," a climate scientist said.
Aug 01, 2024
Antarctica is experiencing its second extreme heatwave in the last three years, with temperatures more than 50°F higher than normal, The Washington Postreported Wednesday.
The heatwave is notable not just for its intensity but also its timing and duration: It's hit during Antartica's winter and is expected to last. Temperatures of 36°F to 50°F above average are expected to persist up to 10 days, and July temperatures were already well above average before it began. The spiking temperatures were also spread across a large area, covering much of the continent, scientists said.
The world has faced exceptionally high temperatures in the last year, with 13 straight monthly heat records and counting, and the poles are warming at roughly twice the rate of the global average. Scientists say the changing conditions around Antarctica have increased the likelihood of higher winter temperatures on the continent.
"It is likely that having less sea ice and a warmer Southern Ocean around the Antarctic continent 'loads the dice' for warmer winter weather over Antarctica," Edward Blanchard, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, told the Post.
Scientists warned that this heatwave was a sign of what's to come as the planet heats up thanks primarily to fossil fuel emissions.
"This historic warm spell in East Antarctica is an ominous example of the temperature spikes this polar climate could experience more of in a warming world," the Post reported.
Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, said on social media that the heatwave is an "eye-opening sign that climate change is starting to really transform the planet."
In March 2022, Antarctica experienced the most intense heatwave in the planet's recorded history, with temperatures up to 72°F above normal. On-site scientists at the time wore shorts and removed their shirts to bask in the sun. The heatwave was the subject of intense scientific research in the two years that followed, with a 54-person team trying to decipher the causes, which they described as "head-hurting" in their complexity.
The 2022 heatwave contributed to reduced sea ice levels. Antarctica experienced the lowest summer and winter levels of sea ice ever recorded last year.
High temperatures in Antarctica are relative—this week's heatwave still had temperatures hovering at about minus-4°F. But sustained periods at such temperatures are highly unusual.
"The heatwave on the Antarctic Plateau is extraordinary more for its duration than for its intensity, although some values are notable," Stefano Di Battista, an expert on Antarctic temperatures, told the Post.
The heatwave is likely the result of changes in the stratosphere roughly 20 miles above ground, scientists said. At the South Pole, the stratosphere contains a polar vortex that is normally stable with cold temperatures and low pressure during the Antarctic winter, but a sudden stratospheric warming event occurred due to atmospheric wave activity, Amy Butler, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Post.
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'Bleak Reality': World on Track to Overshoot 1.5°C Target in at Least 1 of Next 5 Years
"We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price," the WMO's deputy secretary-general said.
Jun 06, 2024
There is an 80% chance that the burning of fossil fuels will push global temperatures past 1.5°C of warming during one of the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday.
The WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update [2024-2028] also finds that there is an 86% chance that one of the next five years will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.
"Behind these statistics lies the bleak reality that we are way off track to meet the goals set in the Paris agreement," WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. "We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity."
"WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency."
In the Paris agreement, world leaders pledged to limit global heating to "well below" 2°C above preindustrial levels and ideally to 1.5°C. When that agreement was adopted in 2015, there was a near-zero chance that one of the subsequent five years would exceed the 1.5°C limit. That chance rose to 20% between 2017 and 2021 and 66% between 2023 and 2027.
WMO predicts that global mean near-surface temperatures over the next five years will average between 1.1°C and 1.9°C above 1850-1900 levels. There is a 47% chance that the temperature average for the entire period will surpass 1.5°C, according to the report, which was prepared by the U.K.'s Met Office.
"If you do NOT hear or read this climate information repeatedly at the top of your media today, there is something very wrong with your media," journalist and activist Wendy Bacon wrote on social media in response to the report. "Opening new fossil fuels in this situation is a crime with massive likely consequences."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C could stave off some of the more extreme impacts of the climate emergency, protecting hundreds of millions of people from climate risk and poverty by 2050 and preventing nearly four inches of sea-level rise. However, scientists point out that no degree of warming is harmless and every degree avoided makes an important difference.
Global temperatures first temporarily pushed past 1.5°C in December 2015, and again during the winter and spring of 2016 and 2020, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
In June 2023, they shot above the target again. Overall, last year's temperatures averaged 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels, but the period from January 2023 to 2024 marked the first time that the global average surpassed 1.5°C for 12 months in a row.
May 2024 was also the 12th consecutive warmest month of its kind on record, capping what is now the hottest 12-month stretch on record, during which temperatures averaged 1.63°C above preindustrial levels. That 12-month stretch brought record-breaking wildfires in Canada, deadly flooding from Libya to Brazil to Afghanistan, and global coral bleaching.
"WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency," Barrett said. "We have already temporarily surpassed this level for individual months—and indeed as averaged over the most recent 12-month period."
"However," Barrett continued, "it is important to stress that temporary breaches do not mean that the 1.5°C goal is permanently lost because this refers to long-term warming over decades."
The record-shattering heat in 2023 was partly fueled by an El Niño event. While the Earth is now entering the cooler La Niña phase, human activity such as the burning of oil, gas, and coal and the clearing of forests could still spike temperatures over the next half decade.
"We are living in unprecedented times, but we also have unprecedented skill in monitoring the climate and this can help inform our actions," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in response to the WMO report. "This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold, but if we manage to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the very near future we might be able to return to these 'cold' temperatures by the end of the century."
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'Climate Arsonists': 8 Major Oil Companies Fail to Align With Paris Agreement
"We cannot trust fossil fuel corporations to do anything but line the pockets of their CEOs and investors at the cost of our climate and communities," one campaigner said.
May 21, 2024
The eight largest U.S. and Europe-based oil and gas producing companies are failing to align their plans with the Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels and avoiding ever more catastrophic climate impacts.
Oil Change International's Big Oil Reality Check report, released Tuesday, concludes that the plans of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies would actually put the world on track for more than 2.4°C of warming and burn through nearly one-third of the global carbon budget for hitting the 1.5°C target.
"It's clearer than ever that oil and gas companies—the climate arsonists fueling climate chaos—cannot be trusted to put out the fire," David Tong, report author and global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement. "There is no evidence that big oil and gas companies are acting seriously to be part of the energy transition."
"The Big Oil Reality Check report reveals that oil and gas corporations are more interested in looking like they are acting on climate change than actually acting on climate change."
For its fourth annual Big Oil Reality Check, Oil Change International judged the oil companies' climate plans and pledges against a set of minimum standards for alignment with the Paris agreement. The standards were divided into three main categories: ambition, integrity, and people-centered transitions.
Under ambition, the companies were assessed on whether they had plans to stop oil and gas exploration, stop approving new extraction projects, decrease production every year through 2030, and stop extraction on a certain date while outlining a long-term plan to end production.
Under integrity, the companies were assessed on whether their emissions-reduction plans included their entire supply chain, whether they relied on carbon capture or offsets, whether their methane-reduction plans were really in line with climate goals, and whether they lobbied or advertised against climate action.
For people-centered transitions, they were assessed on whether they had just transition plans for employees and members of frontline communities and whether they respected human rights overall and the rights of Indigenous peoples, including to free, prior, or informed consent to any fossil fuel activities.
The companies were then rated from "fully aligned" to "grossly insufficient" for how well their plans complied with the Paris goals within the assessment's framework, but all eight companies scored "insufficient" or "grossly insufficient" for a majority of the criteria.
Only one company—Eni—scored above "insufficient" in any category, earning a ranking of "partially aligned" for having greenhouse gas-reduction plans that included its supply chains. The three U.S.-based companies—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil—scored "grossly insufficient" for all 10 criteria.
"American fossil fuel corporations are the worst of the worst," Oil Change International's U.S. program manager Allie Rosenbluth said. "Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips perpetuate harm in frontline communities not only across the U.S. but worldwide."
Oil Change found that six out of the eight companies have official plans to increase oil and gas production. The only two that did not were BP and Shell; however, these companies employ a misleading strategy. They compensate for new oil and gas projects by selling off polluting assets. While the emissions from the sold operations no longer count toward company emissions, they still count toward the planet's total. This practice is out of line with the GHG Protocol on corporate emissions accounting and may violate the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Four of the companies assessed in the report—BP, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron—were also the subject of a recent U.S. House investigation and Senate hearing detailing how the fossil fuel industry playbook has shifted from outright denial of climate science to greenwashing its activities by presenting itself as part of the solution to the climate crisis while its day-to-day operations continue to raise global temperatures.
"The efforts of climate and social movements have forced oil and gas companies to acknowledge that fossil fuels are dirty and dangerous, leading to a variety of climate pledges and 'plans,'" said Oil Change campaigner Myriam Douo. "The Big Oil Reality Check report reveals that oil and gas corporations are more interested in looking like they are acting on climate change than actually acting on climate change."
"They spend billions on smoke and mirrors to try to fool us into believing they have solutions for a livable planet when, in reality, they are perpetuating harm to the climate and local communities while trying to suck every last ounce of profit out of their dirty fossil fuel business," Douo concluded.
All told, Rystand energy data suggests that the combined production of the eight companies will be 17% by 2030 than they were last year.
"Such an increase in production on a global scale would put the world on a path towards global heating well beyond 2°C, locking in destruction of vulnerable communities and ecosystems," the report authors wrote.
The report finds that all of the companies intend to rely on unproven carbon capture technology or offsets schemes to meet their claimed emission-reduction goals and have continued to spend money on lobbying against climate action and greenwashing their own activities since the agreement in Paris.
Further, no company has plans consistent with ensuring a just transition or protecting human rights. In one recent and urgent example, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Shell, and Eni all continue to provide Israel with crude oil despite "the Israeli military's ongoing assault on Palestinian civilians, ecosystems, and infrastructure in Gaza and mounting evidence of war crimes," a March Oil Change investigation found.
The report comes nearly half a year after world leaders agreed to contribute to "transitioning away from fossil fuels" at the COP28 U.N. climate change conference in Dubai. In light of its conclusions, Oil Change called on governments to take action to further a just transition:
- Stop permitting or approving new fossil fuel projects or infrastructure;
- Set a Paris-aligned date for phasing out fossil fuel production;
- End subsidies and financing for fossil fuels and false solutions like carbon capture;
- Use tax policy to incentivize against investing in fossil fuels;
- Craft a just transition, including by making polluters pay for cleanup and reparations; and
- Passing laws to protect human rights and Indigenous rights and giving communities a legal mechanism to seek redress from corporate polluters.
Oil Change also argued that governments in the Global North should hold companies headquartered within their borders accountable for harm abroad and put money into funds to enable the Global South to transition to renewable energy, adapt to climate change, and pay for inevitable loss and damage.
"This year's Big Oil Reality Check makes it clearer than ever—we cannot trust fossil fuel corporations to do anything but line the pockets of their CEOs and investors at the cost of our climate and communities," Rosenbluth said. "People around the world are rising up to end the era of fossil fuels and build a just energy system that puts climate and communities first."
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