sea level – Desdemona Despair

Charles Alexie and Gerald Tom near visible coastal erosion that encroaches on Newtok village in Alaska, on 16 August 2024. Erosion and melting permafrost have largely destroyed Newtok, eating about 70 feet (21.34 meters) of land every year. Photo: Rick Bowmer / AP

October 1, 2024

Climate change destroyed an Alaska village. Its residents are starting over in a new town – “Alaska Native economic, social, and cultural ways of being, which have served so well for millennia, are now under extreme threat due to accelerated environmental change”

By Rick Bowmer and Mark Thiessen 28 September 2024 MERTARVIK, Alaska (AP) – Growing up along the banks of the Ninglick River in western Alaska, Ashley Tom would look out of her window after strong storms from the Bering Sea hit her village and notice something unsettling: the riverbank was creeping ever closer. It was […]

Florida governor Ron DeSantis delivers remarks in Umatilla, Florida,Tuesday, 25 June 2024, during a visit to tout the state’s infrastructure grants program. In May 2024, DeSantis signed a bill that stripped the phrase “climate change” from much of Florida law, reversing 16 years of state policy and, critics said, undermining Florida’s support of renewable and clean energy. Photo: Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel

July 7, 2024

Florida censors references to climate science in textbooks for public schools – “How do you write an environmental science book to appease people who are opposed to climate change?”

By Leslie Postal 5 July 2024 (Orlando Sentinel) – Textbook authors were told last month that some references to “climate change” must be removed from science books before they could be accepted for use in Florida’s public schools, according to two of those authors. A high school biology book also had to add citations to […]

Flames consume a home on Bessie Lane as the Thompson Fire burns in Oroville, California, Tuesday, 2 July 2024. An extended heat wave blanketing Northern California resulted in red flag fire warnings and power shutoffs. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

July 5, 2024

Insurance crisis that started in Florida and California is spreading – “Insurance companies are responding to the fact that we’re seeing more frequent and more severe climate events, and the fact that they’re paying out more than they’re bringing in”

By Scott Cohn 2 July 2024 (CNBC) – An insurance crisis that has sent premiums skyrocketing and caused carriers to flee coastal states like Florida and California is spreading, and it is fundamentally changing the real estate market in states across the country. “Not only is the cost higher than people anticipated, but just the inability to […]

Aerial view showing houses destroyed by rising sea levels and coastal erosion associated with climate change, in the community of El Bosque in Nuevo Centla, Tabasco state, Mexico. About 700 people once lived in El Bosque, which sits on a small peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico. According to environmental group Greenpeace, El Bosque is the first community in Mexico to be officially recognised as displaced by climate change. Photo: Yuri Cortez / AFP

June 1, 2024

Submerged homes and heatwaves fuel Mexico climate angst – “We hear about climate change all the time but we never thought that it would come to us”

28 May 2024 (Al Jazeera) – Waves wash over abandoned homes in a Mexican village slowly being swallowed by the sea; a symbol of the climate change effects being felt by the major fossil fuel producer. The school where Adrian Perez used to attend classes in the community of El Bosque in the southern state […]

Satellite view of Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf, showing an Isle of Wight-sized iceberg that broke away in May 2024. Satellite imagery shows clear water all around the berg (outlined in red). It is the third such block to calve near the base in the past three years. Photo: British Antarctic Survey

May 28, 2024

Isle of Wight-size iceberg breaks from Antarctica – “This latest calving reduces the Brunt Ice Shelf to its smallest observed size”

By Jonathan Amos 21 May 2024 (BBC News) – Another big iceberg has broken away from an area of the Antarctic that hosts the UK’s Halley research station. It is the third such block to calve near the base in the past three years. This new one is not quite as large, but still measures […]

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 […]

Map showing areas surrounding New Orleans underwater by 2050 if current trends in sea level rise continue. Graphic: Climate Central

January 1, 2024

Interactive map shows United States areas under the sea in 2050 due to climate change

By John O’sullivan 1 January 2024 (Irish Star) – Several parts of The United States could be underwater by the year 2050, according to a frightening map produced by Climate Central. The map shows what could happen if the sea levels, driven by climate change, continue to rise at rates of 2 mm and 4 mm […]

Graph showing temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide over the past 66 million years. Paleo-CO2 (including 95 percent credible intervals) is superimposed on the GMST trend over the past 66 million years. Age and CO2 labels highlight notable climate extrema and transitions as described in the text. Graphic: CenCO2PIP, Science 2023

December 25, 2023

A new 66 million-year history of carbon dioxide offers little comfort for today – “Regardless of exactly how many degrees the temperature changes, it’s clear we have already brought the planet into a range of conditions never seen by our species”

By Kevin Krajick 7 December 2023 (Columbia Climate School) – A massive new review of ancient atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels and corresponding temperatures lays out a daunting picture of where the Earth’s climate may be headed. The study covers geologic records spanning the past 66 million years, putting present-day concentrations into context with deep time. Among […]

Screenshot of the Human Climate Horizons platform, showing projected sea level rise (cm) in the 2040-2059 time horizon under the intermediate carbon emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5). Australis, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and and the Pacific islands of Oceania are shown. The global average sea level rise is projected to be more than 18 cm. Graphic: UNDP

December 25, 2023

Climate change’s impact on coastal flooding to increase by five times over this century – “The effects of rising sea levels will put at risk decades of human development progress in densely populated coastal zones which are home to one in seven people in the world”

28 November 2023 (UNDP) – According to new data on the Human Climate Horizons platform, a collaboration between the Climate Impact Lab and UNDP, increased coastal flooding this century will put over 70 million people in the path of expanding floodplains. Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, and Small Island Developing […]

Screenshot from “Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 & the Pacific”, by The Juice Media, showing the rapid, record-breaking decline of Antarctic sea ice in 2023. Photo: The Juice Media

December 3, 2023

Video: Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 and the Pacific – “Let this major fossil-fuel exporter that’s cockblocked climate action for decades co-host a crucial summit with the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world while ignoring their pleas to stop harming them”

1 August 2023 (The Juice Media) – Hello. Bonjour. Ciao stronzi. Namaste. Ham maadarachod hain. I’m from the Australien Government with a message to the world. As cities bake, fires rage, reefs die, jet streams weaken, and 6-Ligma events cause climate scientists to shit their dacks, many are wondering if we’ve finally broken our favourite […]