climate refugees – Page 2 – Desdemona Despair

Annual global mean surface temperature anomalies relative to 1850–1900. Global mean near-surface temperature in 2023 was 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average. The analysis is based on a synthesis of six global temperature datasets. 2023 was the warmest year in the 174-year instrumental record in each of the six datasets. The past nine years – from 2015 to 2023 – were the nine warmest years on record. The two previous warmest years were 2016, with an anomaly of 1.29 ± 0.12 °C, and 2020, with an anomaly of 1.27 ± 0.13 °C. Globally, every month from June to December was record warm for the respective month. September 2023 was particularly noteworthy, surpassing the previous global record for September by a wide margin (0.46 °C–0.54 °C) in all datasets. The second-highest margin by which a September record was broken in the past 60 years (the period covered by all datasets) was substantially smaller, at 0.03 °C–0.17 °C in 1983. July is typically the warmest month of the year globally, and thus July 2023 became the warmest month on record. The long-term increase in global temperature is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The shift from La Niña, which lasted from mid-2020 to early 2023, to fully developed El Niño conditions by September 2023 likely explains some of the rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023. However, some areas of unusual warming, such as the North-East Atlantic do not correspond to typical patterns of warming or cooling associated with El Niño. Other factors, which are still being investigated, may also have contributed to the exceptional warming from 2022 to 2023, which is unlikely to be due to internal variability alone. Graphic: WMO

April 28, 2024

WMO: Climate change indicators reached record levels in 2023 – “Sirens are blaring across all major indicators. Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding-up.”

19 March 2024 (WMO) – A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. Heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones […]

Churchgoers leave Sunday morning service in Kioa, Fiji. Photo: Andrew Quilty / The Guardian

December 3, 2023

Australia offers refuge to Tuvaluans as rising sea levels threaten Pacific archipelago – “We are sinking, but so is everyone else”

By Pauline Rouquette 11 November 2023 (France24) – Canberra announced on Friday that it is offering climate refuge to Tuvaluans, unveiling the terms of a pact that would enable citizens of the 26-square kilometre archipelago – the fourth smallest state in the world – to move to Australia to “live, study and work”. Located near […]

An Ogiek home in Kenya’s Mau Forest that has been set on fire to illegally evict hunter-gatherers from their ancestral lands to profit from carbon offsetting schemes. Photo: OPDP / BBC

December 3, 2023

Kenya’s Ogiek people being evicted for carbon credits – “The Ogiek are on the front line of a false climate solution that is used to justify ongoing evictions and emissions”

By Claire Marshall 9 November 2023 (BBC News) – Kenya’s government is illegally evicting hunter-gatherers from their ancestral lands to profit from carbon offsetting schemes, human rights lawyers say. Hundreds of members of the Ogiek community are being evicted from the Mau Forest, say their representatives. Ogiek leader Daniel Kobei said armed forest rangers were […]

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 […]

Aerial view of the Panamanian island of Carti Sugdupu. Hundreds are preparing to leave the island in the face of rising sea levels. Photo: Luis Acosta

September 10, 2023

“We’re going to sink”: hundreds abandon Caribbean island home – “Almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century”

By Juan José Rodríguez 6 September 2023 (AFP) – On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes. Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama’s north coast has barely an […]

CAMS Daily total cumulative carbon emissions from Canada wildfires in 2023, compared with emissions since 2003. Data for 2023 are current through 28 August 2023. Growth in fire emissions have surpassed 2014 to set a new record for the last two decades. Graphic: Mark Parrington / Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service

September 4, 2023

Wildfires in Canada’s Northwest Territories have released 97 megatons of carbon, 277 times what its people emit – Emissions from wildfires across Canada in 2023 vastly exceed the 2014 record

By Liny Lamberink 28 August 2023 (CBC News) – Wildfires in the N.W.T have emitted 97 megatonnes of carbon into the air so far this year — 277 times more than what was caused by humans in the territory back in 2021. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist working at the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), […]

Children being processed by the U.S. Border Patrol in Roma, Texas. In the past two years alone, 250,000 unaccompanied minors have come into the country. Photo: Kirsten Luce / The New York Times

July 15, 2023

Child labor in America is back and it’s as chilling as ever – “You’re taking children from another country and putting them almost in industrial servitude”

By Steve Fraser 13 July 2023 (The Nation) – An aged Native American chieftain was visiting New York City for the first time in 1906. He was curious about the city and the city was curious about him. A magazine reporter asked the chief what most surprised him in his travels around town. “Little children working,” the […]

Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs, Simon Kofe, gives a COP26 statement while standing in the ocean in Funafuti, Tuvalu 5 November 2021. Photo: Tuvalu Ministry of Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs / REUTERS

June 30, 2023

What happens to a people when their land disappears – “We could lose our status as a state”

By Jonathan Watts 27 June 2023 (The Guardian) – Small island nations would rather fight than flee, but rising sea levels have prompted apocalyptic legal discussions about whether a state is still a state if its land disappears below the waves. The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents many of the most vulnerable countries, has invited international […]

Houses abandoned at Al-Bouzayad village in Iraq’s Diwaniya province due to climate change-driven drought. Photo: AFP

May 21, 2023

Iraq’s climate migrants flee parched land for crowded cities – “Thousands of hectares have been abandoned”

KARBALA, Iraq, 9 May 2023 (AFP) – Mr Haydar Mohamed once grew wheat and barley, but Iraq’s relentless drought has forced him off the land and into the city where he now works in construction and drives a taxi. “The transition is difficult,” said Mr Mohamed, 42, who abandoned village life several years ago for […]

Global annual mean temperature anomalies with respect to pre-industrial conditions (1850-1900) for six global temperature data sets (1850-2022). Graphic: WMO

April 30, 2023

WMO annual report highlights continuous advance of climate change – “While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events”

Geneva, 21 April 2023 (WMO) – From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, according to the annual report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Droughts, floods, and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record […]