Graph of the Day – Page 13 – Desdemona Despair

(a) Linear trends in sea surface temperature (SST) (°C per decade) over the period 1982–2022. (b) Area-averaged time series of SST anomalies (°C) relative to the 1982–2022 reference period for the areas indicated in grey dashed lines in 5(a). Source: Derived from the Copernicus Marine Service remote sensing products available at https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00168 (for 1982–2021) and https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00165 (for 2022). Graphic: WMO

August 20, 2023

Pacific island sea levels rising faster than global average, WMO says – Economic damage in Southwest Pacific due to flooding in 2022 was $8.5 billion, almost triple compared to the previous year

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber 17 August 2023 GENEVA (Reuters) – Sea levels in the South-West Pacific are rising faster than the global average, threatening low-lying islands while heat damages marine ecosystems, the U.N. meteorological agency said on Friday. In its State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2022 report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said […]

Projected system-wide price for the Texas electricity grid on 20 August 2023. By 8:00 PM, the price was expected to rise to nearly $1000 per megawatt-hour. Graphic: ERCOT

August 20, 2023

Texas electricity prices soar 6,000 percent as a fresh heat wave is expected to shatter records – Spot electricity prices jumped to $4,750 per megawatt-hour from the average of $75

By Jason Ma 18 August 2023 (Insider) – Texas power prices soared 6,000% on Thursday as a fresh heat wave is expected to shatter temperature records in the coming days. Spot electricity prices jumped to $4,750 per megawatt-hour Thursday afternoon from the average of $75 on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from grid operator Electric […]

This map shows global temperature anomalies for July 2023 according to the GISTEMP analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperature anomalies reflect how July 2023 compared to the average July temperature from 1951-1980. Graphic: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

August 20, 2023

NASA announces July 2023 was hottest month on record – “The science is clear this isn’t normal”

By Sheri Walsh 14 August 2023 (UPI) – July 2023 was the hottest month on record in 143 years, as Americans felt “the effects of the climate crisis,” scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York announced Monday. According to NASA, July 2023 was on average 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any […]

Map showing global water stress projected to 2050. By 2050, an additional 1 billion people are expected to live with extremely high water stress, even if the world limits global temperature rise to 1.3 degrees C to 2.4 degrees C (2.3 degrees F to 4.3 degrees F) by 2100, an optimistic scenario. Global water demand is projected to increase by 20 percent to 25 percent by 2050, while the number of watersheds facing high year-to-year variability, or less predictable water supplies, is expected to increase by 19 percent. Data: wri.org/aqueduct. Graphic: WRI

August 20, 2023

25 countries, housing one-quarter of the population, face extremely high water stress – By 2050, an additional 1 billion people will live with extremely high water stress

By Samantha Kuzma, Liz Saccoccia, and Marlena Chertock 16 August 2023 (WRI) – New data from WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas show that 25 countries — housing one-quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year, regularly using up almost their entire available water supply. And at least 50% of the world’s population […]

Globally averaged surface air temperature for all months of July from 1940 to 2023. Shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while shades of red show years that were warmer than average. Data: ERA5. Graphic: C3S/ECMWF.

August 14, 2023

July 2023 sees multiple global temperature records broken – Global mean temperature temporarily exceeded the 1.5° C threshold – “The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future”

8 August 2023 (C3S) – The month started with the daily global mean surface air temperature record being broken on four days in a row, from 3-6 July. All days throughout the rest of July were hotter than the previous record of 16.80°C, set on 13 August 2016, making the 29 days from 3-31 July […]

Map showing forecast high surface temperatures in the U.S. for 4 August 2023. Data: National Weather Service. Graphic: Pivotal Weather

August 5, 2023

Summer 2023 heatwave just won’t quit, with more record-breaking high temperatures to come – Heat wave redux brings “oppressive” conditions to 70 million people in U.S.

By Andrew Freedman 3 August 2023 (Axios) – The heat wave that just won’t quit is bringing dangerously hot conditions from the Southern Plains to parts of the Mississippi River Valley, Gulf Coast, and increasingly, the Southwest, through the weekend. The big picture: Heat alerts are in effect for about 70 million people from Georgia to Kansas, […]

Maximum July temperatures averaged over the length of the heat events defined for the WWA study published on 25 July 2023 (left-hand side) and the same but expressed in anomalies with respect to 1950-2023 (right-hand side). The first row shows the Western USA and Mexico, the second Southern Europe and the third row China. Graphic: World Weather Attribution

August 5, 2023

Extreme heat in North America, Europe, and China in July 2023 made much more likely by global warming – Without human-induced climate change these heat events would have been extremely rare: China heatwave would have been a 1 in 250-year event, and max heat like in July 2023 would have been virtually impossible in the U.S./Mexico region and Southern Europe

25 July 2023 (World Weather Attribution) – Following a record hot June, large areas of the US and Mexico, Southern Europe and China experienced extreme heat in July 2023, breaking many local high temperature records. July 2023 saw extreme heatwaves in several parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the Southwest of the US and Mexico, […]

Daily global surface air temperature, 1940-2023. July 2023 was the hottest July on record. The chart shows average global air temperature at 2 metres above the surface (land and sea). Data: Copernicus/ERA5. Graphic: The Guardian

August 5, 2023

“The era of global boiling has arrived,” says UN chief as July 2023 set to be hottest month on record – “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.”

By Ajit Niranjan 27 July 2023 (The Guardian) – The era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And […]

Satellite view of an algae bloom in the waters north of the Scandinavian and Kola peninsulas, 3 August 2023. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. One group of researchers observed large shifts in the location of summer coccolithophore blooms to the northeast between 2002 and 2018. They also identified an increasing presence of Phaeocystis pouchetii, a type of phytoplankton normally found in warmer waters that can form gelatinous colonies millimeters in diameter. The effect that such changes might have on the ecosystem is a topic of ongoing research. Data: MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Photo: Michala Garrison / NASA Earth Observatory

August 5, 2023

The ocean’s color is changing as a consequence of global warming – Color changes reflect significant shifts in essential marine ecosystems – “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening”

By Jennifer Chu 12 July 2023 (MIT News Office) – The ocean’s color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere. In a study appearing today in Nature, the team writes […]

Changes of sea surface temperature (SST) gradient anomalies and the spatial distribution of SST to a changing CO2 pathway. (A) Time evolution of latitudinal gradient of sea surface temperature anomaly (unit: °C) in the SH (pink) from its PD value. (B) Same as (A) but for the NH (black), the North Pacific (NP; 120°E to 90°W, green dotted line), and the North Atlantic (NA; 70°W to 0°E, orange dashed line) sectors with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) strength anomaly from its PD value (skyblue; unit: Sv). The SST gradient is determined by the SST differences from the tropics (0° to 15°) to the midlatitudes (45° to 60°) in each hemisphere. The AMOC strength is defined by averaging annual-mean Atlantic meridional ocean stream function within the latitudinal band from 35°N to 45°N at a depth of 1000 m. Note that the weakening of AMOC is upwards in the right axis in (B). All values are based on the ensemble mean of 28 members (subjected to an 11-year running mean), with their 1 SD ranges across the ensemble members marked with shading. (C to E) SST changes (unit: °C) for peak (2121–2160) minus early RU (2001–2040) periods, late RD (2241–2280) minus peak periods, and late RD minus early RU periods, respectively. Climatological SST in the PD climate (unit: °C) is contoured in (C) to (E). The hatched regions in (C) to (E) indicate where temperature changes are statistically insignificant at the 95% confidence level. The SH, NP, and NA sectors for the SST gradient in (A) and (B) are denoted by colored boxes in (C) to (E). Graphic: Kim, et al., 2023 / Science Advances

August 5, 2023

Removing carbon from Earth’s atmosphere may not “fix” climate change – Changes to atmospheric circulation caused by global warming may persist for centuries after CO2 concentrations decrease – “We cannot control nature. We cannot reverse the consequences that easily. We cannot fix nature.”

By Tereza Pultarova 28 July 2023 (Space.com) – Removing carbon from Earth’s atmosphere may not reverse devastating changes to weather patterns in vulnerable areas, a new study suggests. In the study, Korean researchers simulated how removing large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air might affect the progress of local climate changes […]