Regional glacier mass change and contributions to sea level rise from 2015 to 2100. Discs show global and regional projections of glacier mass remaining by 2100 relative to 2015 for global mean temperature change scenarios. Discs are scaled based on each region’s contribution to global mean sea level rise from 2015 to 2100 for the +2°C scenario by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels, and nested rings are colored by temperature change scenarios showing normalized mass remaining in 2100. Regional sea level rise contributions >1 mm SLE for the +2°C scenario are printed in the center of each disc. The horizontal bars below each disc show time series of area-averaged annual mass balance from 2015 to 2100 for +1.5°C (top bar) and +3°C (bottom bar) scenarios. The colorbar is saturated at −2.5 m w.e., but minimum annual values reach −4.2 m w.e. in Scandinavia. Graphic: Rounce, et al., 2022 / Science

Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

By Phoebe Weston 5 January 2023 (The Guardian) – Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen […]

Body bags lay on gurneys at the back entrance of a funeral home in Shanghai, China, on Saturday, 31 December 2022. Photo: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg

Bodies pile up in China as Covid surge overwhelms crematoriums – “Bodies are overflowing everywhere”

3 January 2023 (Bloomberg News) – For five days the elderly Chinese lady’s corpse lay decomposing in the Shanghai house she shared with her family before a hearse finally arrived to take away her remains. “We’re lucky it’s the cold winter time,” a relative said last week at Shanghai’s Longhua Funeral Home, recounting the ordeal […]

Maasai children stand beside a zebra that local residents say died due to drought, as they graze their cattle at Ilangeruani village, near Lake Magadi, in Kenya, on 9 November 2022. Photo: Brian Inganga / AP Photo

In 2022, AP photographers captured pain of a changing planet

By Peter Prengaman 16 December 2022 (AP) – In 2022, Associated Press photographers captured signs of a planet in distress as climate change reshaped many lives. That distress was seen in the scarred landscapes in places where the rains failed to come. It was felt in walloping storms, land-engulfing floods, suffocating heat and wildfires no […]

Map showing nations where journalists were killed or imprisoned during 2022. The IFJ released the latest figures ahead of International Human Rights Day, recording 67 killings of journalists and media staff in the line of duty in 2022 compared to 47 last year - a reversal of the decline recorded in recent years. Graphic: IFJ

67 journalists killed so far in 2022 – “The surge in the killings of journalists and other media workers is a grave cause of concern and yet another wake up call for governments across the globe to take action in the defence of journalism, one of the key pillars of democracy”

9 December 2022 (IFJ) – The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today renewed its call on the international community for concrete action to protect the safety and freedoms of journalists as it recorded a spike in the numbers of journalists killed or imprisoned during 2022. The vote on the IFJ Convention on the Safety and […]

The leadership of the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference applaud after passing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19 December 2022. Photo: Julian Haber / UN Biodiversity / REUTERS

COP15 reaches deal to halt decline in nature by 2030 – Countries to allocate $200 billion per year for biodiversity initiatives but funds to biodiversity are miniscule – “We know the global economy and every company in it is negatively impacting biodiversity”

By Isla Binnie and Gloria Dickie 19 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity […]

U.S. President Joe Biden departs after speaking at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, 11 November 2022, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Photo: Alex Brandon / AP Photo

COP27 ends in tears and frustration – Reactions from participants – “The world will not thank us”

By Camilla Hodgson 20 November 2022 Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (Financial Times) – Choking back his emotions, Tuvalu finance minister Seve Paeniu held up a photo of five youth delegates from his country and expressed his “deep regret and disappointment” that COP27 had been a “missed opportunity”. More than 80 countries had supported a proposal to […]

Number of U.S. dollar billionaires in China, 1999-2022. The year 2022 saw the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List in the 24 years of its existence. Data: Hurun Research Institute. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

China’s superrich decimated as economic downturn wipes out billions – “This year has seen the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List of the last 24 years”

By John Feng 8 November 2022 (Newsweek) – China’s wealthy lost hundreds of billions of dollars in 2022 as the global economic downturn also shook up the country’s typically high-growth industries, according to an annual rich list published on Tuesday. The number of Chinese entrepreneurs worth 5 billion Chinese yuan ($710 million) or more on September 15 […]

Landsat images from 21 February 2000 (left) and 27 July 2019 (right) illustrating glacier retreat on top of Mount Kilimanjaro (United Republic of Tanzania). Photo: U.S. Geological Survey

Kilimanjaro’s and Africa’s last glaciers to go by 2050, says UN – “What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening”

By Patrick Hughes 3 November 2022 (BBC News) – Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report [UNESCO finds that some iconic World Heritage glaciers will disappear by 2050 –Des]. Glaciers in a third of […]

Global human population, 1700-2022. On 15 November 2022, the world’s population was estimated to reach 8 billion people, having grown by 1 billion since 2010. This is a remarkable milestone given that the human population numbered under 1 billion for millennia until around 1800, and that it took more than 100 years to grow from 1 to 2 billion. By comparison, the increase of the world’s population over the last century has been quite rapid. Despite a gradual slowing in the pace of growth, the global population is projected to surpass 9 billion around 2037 and 10 billion around 2058. Graphic: UN DESA

Global human population hits 8 billion – “We are already overstretching what we have: the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched.”

By Dan Ikpoyi and Chinedu Asadu 15 November 2022 LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – The world’s population will likely hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa. Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than […]

Components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties, 1960-2021 and projected to 2022. Components are presented individually for (a) fossil CO2 and cement carbonation emissions (EFOS), (b) growth rate in atmospheric CO2 concentration (GATM), (c) emissions from land-use change (ELUC), (d) the land CO2 sink (SLAND), (e) the ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN), and (f) the budget imbalance that is not accounted for by the other terms. Positive values of SLAND and SOCEAN represent a flux from the atmosphere to land or the ocean. All data are in GtC yr−1 with the uncertainty bounds representing ±1 standard deviation in shaded colour. Data sources are as in Fig. 3. The red dots indicate our projections for the year 2022, and the red error bars the uncertainty in the projections. Graphic: Friedlingstein, et al., 2022 / Earth System Science Data

Global Carbon Budget 2022: Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – No sign of decrease in global CO2 emissions – “This year we see yet another rise in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a rapid decline”

11 November 2022 (Global Carbon Project) – Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – with no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, according to the Global Carbon Project science team (Global Carbon Budget 2022). If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance […]

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