China – Desdemona Despair

Map showing notable economic loss events due to natural and climate disasters in 2023. Global economic losses in 2023 were higher than the 21st century average. Economic losses from global natural disasters in 2023 are estimated at $380 billion, above long-term and short-term averages, after adjusting historical losses to today’s values using the U.S. Consumer Price Index. All continents recorded remarkable natural disaster events in 2023 and multiple countries faced the most significant disasters in their modern histories. The global map shows event and peril patterns that contributed to the overall economic losses in 2023. The largest loss driver was earthquake, yet this was largely caused by a handful of events, notably the earthquake sequence in Turkey and Syria. Severe convective storms came second, with the largest individual losses concentrated in the United States and Europe. Graphic: Aon

February 19, 2024

Aon: Number of billion-dollar disasters in 2023 highest on record – Severe convective storms were the most damaging peril for insurers

LONDON, 23 January 2024 (Aon) – Aon plc, a leading global professional services firm, today published its 2024 Climate and Catastrophe Insight report, which identifies global natural disaster and climate trends to help make better decisions to manage volatility and enhance global resilience. The report reveals that the 398 global natural disaster events caused a $380 billion (2022: $355 billion) […]

Percentage of documented and undocumented mines, by country. More than half of the global mining areas (56 percent) visible from satellite images have no production information available listed in a global compilation from the S&P Capital IQ Pro database. The total worldwide mining land use for mining in 120,000 km2, with 67,000 km2 undocumented. Graphic: Nature

January 3, 2024

Impacts for half of the world’s mining areas are undocumented – 56 percent of global mining areas visible from satellite images have no production information available

By Victor Maus and Tim T. Werner 3 January 2024 (Nature) – Mining is a crucial industry — from iron and copper to gravel and sand, we depend on it for the basic building blocks of the modern world. It is a fast changing sector, as the clean energy transition and digitalization boost demand for […]

Aerial view of the Donnie Creek wildfire in northeastern British Columbia in May 2023. The massive blaze ripped across more than 1.44 million acres of land throughout the late spring and summer, making it the largest wildfire on record for the Canadian province. Photo: BC Wildfire Service

December 30, 2023

Ten “you must be kidding” weather and climate facts of 2023

By Bob Henson and Jeff Masters 26 December 2023 (Yale Climate Connections) – The drumbeat of record weather and climate phenomena — hottest, wettest, fieriest, fiercest, and so on — can sometimes fade into the background, like the repetitive backdrop to a mournful dirge. Then there are those sharp moments, like a cymbal crash, when […]

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2021 and trend since 2000, including inventory-based Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) CO2 in GtCO2e (top) and Per capita GHG emissions in 2021 and trend since 2000, including inventory-based LULUCF CO2 in tCO2e/capita (bottom). Graphic: UNEP

December 29, 2023

Petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report – “These plans throw humanity’s future into question. Governments must stop saying one thing and doing another.”

By Damian Carrington 8 November 2023 (The Guardian) – The world’s fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” which “throw humanity’s future into question”. The energy plans of the petrostates contradicted their climate policies and pledges, the report said. […]

A map of the world plotted with some of the most significant climate events that occurred during November 2023. Graphic: NOAA/NCEI

December 29, 2023

NOAA reports 2023 hottest year on record, so far – “We will look back at 2023 and think of it as: remember that year that wasn’t so bad?”

By Lauren Sommer 28 December 2023 (NPR) – As 2023 draws to a close, it’s going out on top. “It’s looking virtually certain at this point that 2023 will be the hottest year on record,” says Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit that analyzes climate trends. Though temperature records from December have […]

Global mean surface temperature anomaly, 1970-2023. The average global temperature in 2023 was 1.32°C above that during the pre-industrial baseline period of 1850 to 1900, surpassing the previous record of 1.29°C that was set from October 2015 to September 2016. Data: Climate Central. Graphic: Nature

November 10, 2023

Earth had its hottest year on record in 2023 – “This is the hottest temperature that our planet has experienced in something like 125,000 years”

By Carissa Wong 10 November 2023 (Nature) – The past 12 months were the hottest on record. Some 7.3 billion people worldwide were exposed, for at least 10 days, to temperatures that were heavily influenced by global warming, with one-quarter of people facing dangerous levels of extreme heat over the past 12 months, according to a report […]

Map of ensemble mean trends in ocean temperature and ice-shelf basal melting in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) for the Paris 2°C scenario. Temperature is averaged over the depth range 200–700 m. Trends are calculated at each point using annually averaged fields from 2006–2100. White regions indicate no significant trend. The Amundsen Sea region visualized here (latitude–longitude projection) is outlined in red in the inset map of Antarctica (polar stereographic projection). The black dashed line shows the 1,750 m depth contour of the continental shelf break and the blue dashed line outlines the continental shelf region used for analysis. Labels denote ice shelves (G, Getz; D, Dotson; Cr, Crosson; T, Thwaites; P, Pine Island; Co, Cosgrove; A, Abbot). Graphic: Naughten, et al., 2023 / Nature

November 10, 2023

The climate contradiction that will sink us – “We already have a refugee crisis; I shudder to think what would happen if everyone living within two meters of sea level would be displaced.”

By Zoë Schlanger 10 November 2023 (The Atlantic) – You’d be forgiven for thinking that the fight against climate change is finally going well. The clean-energy revolution is well under way and exceeding expectations. Solar is set to become the cheapest form of energy in most places by 2030, and the remarkable efficiency of heat pumps is driving their own uptake […]

Annual hot-hours under (A) 1.5, (B) 2, (C) 3, and (D) 4 °C of warming relative to preindustrial level, (E) population projection in 2050 following the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2, and (F) population subject to accumulated duration of 1 wk to 3 mo of uncompensable heat stress annually under 1–4 °C of global warming (the shaded area corresponds to the 10th to 90th percentiles of CMIP6 model spread). Rectangles in panel a delineate regions where heat exposure increases with global warming are particularly large and will be examined in detail in later sections. Graphic: Vecellio, et al., 2023 / PNAS

October 31, 2023

Climate-driven extreme heat may make parts of Earth too hot for humans – “If temperatures continue to rise, we will live in a world where crops are failing and millions or billions of people are trying to migrate because their native regions are uninhabitable”

By Aaron Wagner 9 October 2023 UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (PennState) – If global temperatures increase by 1 degree Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State […]

The Norwegian Aker BioMarine’s Antarctic Sea trawls for krill in the Southern Ocean off the coast of the South Orkney Islands, north of the Antarctic Peninsula, on 10 March 2023. Photo: AP Photo / David Keyton

October 29, 2023

Factory fishing in Antarctica for krill targets the cornerstone of a fragile ecosystem – “What’s coming out of the side are the remnants of the ecosystem”

By Joshua Goodman and David Keyton 13 October 2023 (AP) – The Antarctic Endeavour glides across the water’s silky surface as dozens of fin whales spray rainbows from their blowholes into a fairy tale icescape of massive glaciers. But as a patrol of environmentalists approaches the Chilean super trawler in an inflatable boat, the cruder […]

Wind farms in Boqueirão da Onça, or Jaguars’ Ravine, in the Caatinga in northeastern Brazil. Conservationists say companies shouldn’t install turbines in long rows, which forces animals to make unnecessarily long detours. Photo: Dado Galdieri / The Wall Street Journal

September 30, 2023

Brazil’s big cats under threat from wind farms – “Wind power is a fantastic proposal, and the northeast certainly has plenty of wind … but wind parks must also take into account what is happening here on the ground”

By Luciana Magalhaes and Samantha Pearson 17 September 2023 JUAZEIRO, Brazil – Weighing more than 100 pounds, big cats have long reigned over this hot and semi-arid region of Brazil, developing tougher paws for the scorched earth and reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour to bring down wild boar and deer. But nothing could […]