This year’s UN climate summit — COP29 — is being held during another record-breaking year of higher global temperatures, adding pressure to negotiations aimed at curbing climate change.
The last global scientific consensus on climate change was released in 2021 through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, scientists say evidence shows global warming and its impacts are unfolding faster than expected.
Here is some of the latest climate research:
1.5ºC BREACHED?
The world may already have hit 1.5ºC of warming above the average pre-industrial temperature — a critical threshold beyond which it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change, scientists say.
A group of researchers made the suggestion in a study released on Monday based on an analysis of 2,000 years of atmospheric gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores that extends the understanding of pre-industrial temperature trends.
Scientists have typically measured today’s temperatures against a baseline temperature average for 1850-1900. By that measure, the world is now at nearly 1.3ºC of warming.
The new data suggests a longer pre-industrial baseline, based on temperature data spanning the year 13 to 1700, the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience said.
Either way, 2024 is certain to be the warmest year on record.
SUPERCHARGED HURRICANES
Not only is ocean warming fuelling stronger Atlantic storms, it is also causing them to intensify more rapidly, for example, jumping from a Category 1 to a Category 3 storm in just hours.
Growing evidence shows this is true of other ocean basins.
Hurricane Milton needed only one day in the Gulf of Mexico in October to go from tropical storm to the Gulf’s second-most powerful hurricane on record, slamming Florida’s west coast.
Warmer air can also hold more moisture, helping storms carry and eventually release more rain. As a result, hurricanes are delivering flooding even in mountain towns such as Asheville, North Carolina, inundated in September by Hurricane Helene.