Summary

By Claudia Dupeirón

From the Science and Technology editorial office of Prensa Latina

Neither the summits on climate change, nor the thousands of reports from international agencies or the devastating images of cities on fire or flooded have served to reverse the devastating activity of man on the planet.

The promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 to levels consistent between two and 1.5 degrees Celsius take less time to vanish than Usain Bolt does to run the 100 meters.

According to an analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, the summer of 2023 was the hottest for Earth since global temperature records were set in 1880. .

Another report published in October of this year by the magazine Bioscience reached the same conclusion. According to this text, until September 12, its deadline for data collection, the Earth had already experienced 38 days in which the average daily temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius, more than in any other year. .

While a report this December belonging to the Climate Research Foundation corroborated that 86 days this year have already been above one and a half degrees.

William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University and lead author of the report, explained that “June and July of this year were the warmest periods ever recorded.”

He said that the seventh month was not only the hottest month in more than 170 years of records, but probably the hottest in more than 100,000 years.

Data released in October by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that September surpassed the previous monthly record set in 2020 by a staggering 0.5 degrees Celsius.

“There has never been such an abnormally hot month since Copernicus records began in 1940,” the international center noted.

According to NASA, June, July and August combined were 0.23 degrees Celsius warmer than any other summer, and 1.2 degrees warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. “August alone was 1.2 degrees warmer than the average”.

Not only was the summer of 2023 the warmest, but two days in November exceeded the limits of two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN that “the end of September” put 2023 in the dubious honor of first place. “That is, on track to be the warmest year and around 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial average temperatures.”

In September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States estimated the chances of reaching this milestone at more than 93 percent, while by November the probabilities were at 99 percent.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) indicated that 2023 will have an average of 1.4 degrees, close to the limit established in Paris (1.5), and that figure will probably be exceeded in 2033 or 2034.

THE CHILD WREAK HAVOC, BUT ALL THE BLAME IS NOT HIS

Many of the high temperatures in 2023 could be associated with the El Niño weather pattern, a natural process in the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures and has a major influence on climate around the world. .

Although it occurs every two to seven years, the waters of the eastern Pacific can be up to four degrees warmer than normal; The blame for so much heat is not his alone and it would be too easy to focus the extreme warming of 2023 on this phenomenon alone.

The 2023 Emissions Gap Report, published on November 20 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), recognizes that, unless countries intensify climate action and comply more than promised by 2030, the world is heading towards a temperature of between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees.

According to a document from the Global Carbon Project group of scientists that was published at the beginning of December, despite the fact that the rate of increase in emissions in recent years has slowed down, they continue to increase, and in 2023 they will reach a new record, with 1.1 percent more carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted than in 2022.

For its part, the UN Group of Experts on Climate Change assured that, with current policies, the world is heading for a warming of about 3.2 degrees by the end of the century.

“Emissions would have to be reduced by 43 percent in 2030 to reach the objective of not exceeding 1.5 degrees, that is, 7.6 percent annually, even more than what they fell in 2020 due to the pandemic,” he indicated. the text.

The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, said that the lack of leadership is one of the relevant causes of the current climate crisis, which shows with the increase in global emissions “a betrayal of the vulnerable and an enormous lost opportunity.”

“The emissions gap is more like a canyon full of broken promises, broken lives and broken records,” warned the UN chief.

During the opening of COP28 in Dubai, the executive secretary of the UN climate change area, Simon Stiell, assured that humanity is on the edge of the “precipice.”

Therefore, he said, it must commit to creating “a new energy system,” sending “a signal of the terminal decline of the “fossil fuel era as we know it.”

The planet is getting hotter and the records continue

According to a guide from the United States Universities Corporation for Atmospheric Research published in early December, the average temperature of the Earth has exceeded its last record for 30 consecutive days, the ocean has been warmer than usual for four months and The extent of frozen sea in Antarctica is at historic lows despite it being winter in the southern hemisphere.

In its latest scientific report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted an increase in sea surface temperature of 3.3 degrees.

For its part, a summary by The Washington Post published in July, indicated that, in addition to the tropical Pacific, warming is concentrated in three areas: the North Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. In the latter, the average temperature exceeds 28 degrees with areas reaching 30 on specific days.

Warmer oceans are less able to absorb carbon dioxide, reinforcing the inertia of global warming.

Likewise, several analyzes from the University of Maine in the United States agree that, since July 2023, the average temperature of the Earth is increasing to levels never seen before.

The Copernicus center reports that the average air temperature two meters above the planet’s surface, including land and oceans, had never exceeded 17 degrees.

However, starting from the first days of the seventh month of 2023, at least 30 consecutive days have exceeded the maximum of 16.7997 degrees recorded for August 13, 2016, another period in which the El phenomenon also took place. Child.

AND FOR THE NEXT YEARS…MORE HEAT

The forecasts do not seem very encouraging, and since May of this year, the World Meteorological Organization had launched its annual 10-year Global Climate Update, a report in which it warned that there is a 66 percent probability that the average annual temperature close to the area between 2023 and 2027 exceeds pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5 degrees for at least a year.

“Added to this is that there is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest ever recorded.”

The agency’s secretary general, Petteri Taalas, explained that these trends will have far-reaching implications for health, food security, water management and the environment.

Data from that report predicts that from 2023 to 2027 the global average annual near-surface temperature will be 1.1 to 1.8 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 average.

«The Earth’s vital signs are failing: record emissions, ferocious fires, deadly droughts and the hottest year on record. We are kilometers away from the objectives of the Paris Agreement and at the limit of being able to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” said the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on December 1 in Dubai.

Speaking at the COP28 climate summit, he assured that it is not yet too late to limit global warming and avoid planetary collapse. However, it is not the first time that such a warning has been made, let us hope that it will be the last and in the next climate meeting, there will be less warning; but more be done.

arc/cdg

2023-12-28 05:32:17
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