global warming
Earth given 50-50 chance of hitting key warming mark by 2026
The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted.
With human-made climate change continuing, there’s a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 1800s at least once between now and 2026, a bright red signal in climate change negotiations and science, a team of 11 different forecast centers predicted for the World Meteorological Organization late Monday.
The odds are inching up along with the thermometer. Last year, the same forecasters put the odds at closer to 40% and a decade ago it was only 10%.
The team, coordinated by the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office, in their five-year general outlook said there is a 93% chance that the world will set a record for hottest year by the end of 2026. They also said there's a 93% chance that the five years from 2022 to 2026 will be the hottest on record. Forecasters also predict the devastating fire-prone megadrought in the U.S. Southwest will keep going.
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“We’re going to see continued warming in line with what is expected with climate change,” said UK Met Office senior scientist Leon Hermanson, who coordinated the report.
These forecasts are big picture global and regional climate predictions on a yearly and seasonal time scale based on long term averages and state of the art computer simulations. They are different than increasingly accurate weather forecasts that predict how hot or wet a certain day will be in specific places.
But even if the world hits that mark of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times — the globe has already warmed about 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s — that’s not quite the same as the global threshold first set by international negotiators in the 2015 Paris agreement. In 2018, a major United Nations science report predicted dramatic and dangerous effects on people and the world if warming exceeds 1.5 degrees.
The global 1.5 degree threshold is about the world being that warm not for one year, but over a 20- or 30- year time period, several scientists said. This is not what the report predicts. Meteorologists can only tell if Earth hits that average mark years, maybe a decade or two, after it is actually reached there because it is a long term average, Hermanson said.
“This is a warning of what will be just average in a few years,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams.
The prediction makes sense given how warm the world already is and an additional tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) is expected because of human-caused climate change in the next five years, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams. Add to that the likelihood of a strong El Nino — the natural periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that alter world weather — which could toss another couple tenths of a degree on top temporarily and the world gets to 1.5 degrees.
The world is in the second straight year of a La Nina, the opposite of El Nino, which has a slight global cooling effect but isn’t enough to counter the overall warming of heat-trapping gases spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, scientists said. The five-year forecast says that La Nina is likely to end late this year or in 2023.
The greenhouse effect from fossil fuels is like putting global temperatures on a rising escalator. El Nino, La Nina and a handful of other natural weather variations are like taking steps up or down on that escalator, scientists said.
On a regional scale, the Arctic will still be warming during the winter at rate three times more than the globe on average. While the American Southwest and southwestern Europe are likely to be drier than normal the next five years, wetter than normal conditions are expected for Africa’s often arid Sahel region, northern Europe, northeast Brazil and Australia, the report predicted.
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The global team has been making these predictions informally for a decade and formally for about five years, with greater than 90% accuracy, Hermanson said.
NASA top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said the figures in this report are “a little warmer” than what the U.S. NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration use. He also had doubts about skill level on long-term regional predictions.
“Regardless of what is predicted here, we are very likely to exceed 1.5 degrees C in the next decade or so, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are committed to this in the long term — or that working to reduce further change is not worthwhile,” Schmidt said in an email.
The heat stays on: Earth hits 6th warmest year on record
Earth simmered to the sixth hottest year on record in 2021, according to several newly released temperature measurements.
And scientists say the exceptionally hot year is part of a long-term warming trend that shows hints of accelerating.
Two U.S. science agencies — NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — and a private measuring group released their calculations for last year’s global temperature on Thursday, and all said it wasn’t far behind ultra-hot 2016 and 2020.
Six different calculations found 2021 was between the fifth and seventh hottest year since the late 1800s. NASA said 2021 tied with 2018 for sixth warmest, while NOAA puts last year in sixth place by itself.
Scientists say a La Nina — natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns globally and brings chilly deep ocean water to the surface — dampened global temperatures just as its flip side, El Nino, boosted them in 2016.
Still, they said 2021 was the hottest La Nina year on record and that the year did not represent a cooling off of human-caused climate change but provided more of the same heat.
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“So it’s not quite as headline-dominating as being the warmest on record, but give it another few years and we’ll see another one of those” records, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Berkeley Earth monitoring group that also ranked 2021 the sixth hottest. “It’s the long-term trend, and it’s an indomitable march upward.”
Gavin Schmidt, the climate scientist who heads NASA’s temperature team, said “the long-term trend is very, very clear. And it’s because of us. And it’s not going to go away until we stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record, NASA and NOAA data agree. Global temperatures, averaged over a 10-year period to take out natural variability, are nearly 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer than 140 years ago, their data shows.
The other 2021 measurements came from the Japanese Meteorological Agency and satellite measurements by Copernicus Climate Change Service i n Europe and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
There was such a distinctive jump in temperatures about eight to 10 years ago that scientists have started looking at whether the rise in temperatures is speeding up. Both Schmidt and Hausfather said early signs point to that but it’s hard to know for sure.
“If you just look at the last the last 10 years, how many of them are way above the trend line from the previous 10 years? Almost all of them,” Schmidt said in an interview.
There’s a 99% chance that 2022 will be among the 10 warmest years on record and a 10% chance it will be the hottest on record, said NOAA climate analysis chief Russell Vose in a Thursday press conference.
Vose said chances are 50-50 that at least one year in the 2020s will hit 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming since pre-industrial times — the level of warming nations agreed to try to avoid in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
While that threshold is important, extreme weather from climate change is hurting people now in their daily lives with about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming, Vose and Schmidt said.
Also read: Darwin in a lab: Coral evolution tweaked for global warming
The global average temperature last year was 58.5 degrees (14.7 Celsius), according to NOAA. In 1988, NASA’s then-chief climate scientist James Hansen grabbed headlines when he testified to Congress about global warming in a year that was the hottest on record at the time. Now, the 57.7 degrees (14.3 Celsius) of 1988 ranks as the 28th hottest year on record.
Last year, 1.8 billion people in 25 Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations had their hottest years on record, including China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Iran, Myanmar and South Korea, according to Berkeley Earth.
The deep ocean, where most heat is stored in the seas, also set a record for warmth in 2021, according to a separate new study.
“Ocean warming, aside from causing coral bleaching and threatening sea life and fish populations, ... is destabilizing Antarctic ice shelves and threatens massive ... sea level rise if we don’t act,” said study co-author Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist.
The last time Earth had a cooler than normal year by NOAA or NASA calculations was 1976. That means 69% of the people on the planet — more than 5 billion people under age 45 — have never experienced such a year, based on United Nations data.
North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, 39, who wasn’t part of the new reports but said they make sense, said, “I’ve only lived in a warming world and I wish that the younger generations did not have to say the same. It didn’t have to be this way.”
Darwin in a lab: Coral evolution tweaked for global warming
On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef.
Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes.
In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.
For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they're getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in Nature.
“Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing,” said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project's manager.
SPEEDING UP NATURE
Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient:
— Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents.
— Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures.
— And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients.
Hughes said the methods all have proven successful in the lab.
And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with Nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. “We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future,” she said.
When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors. The coral turns white — a process called bleaching — and can quickly become sick and die.
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For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef.
So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii's reefs.
“Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe,” said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab. “And so that’s what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.”
A NOVEL IDEA
In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world's worst bleaching events.
The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program.
“We’ve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive,” Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview.
Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how “intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.”
Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.
A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world's coral reefs. Scientists found that between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14% of its coral.
Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed.
Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were “playing gods” by tampering with the reef.
“Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time,” van Oppen said. “All we’re trying to do is to repair the damage.”
Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. “We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there."
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MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING
Still, there are lingering questions.
“We have discovered lots of reasons why corals don’t bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. “Just because you find a coral that isn’t bleaching in the field or in the lab doesn’t mean it’s permanently heat tolerant.”
Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.
“This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat,” Palumbi said. “So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that there’s some disadvantage to it. And if there weren’t a disadvantage, they’d all be heat resistant.”
But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because “reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.”
The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. The U.S. government also backs the effort.
Assisted evolution "is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences,” said Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program.
“We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management,” Koss said. “And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.”
MAJOR HURDLES
There are still serious challenges.
Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.
James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.
“It’s great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way,” Guest said.
Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.
No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the world’s reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures – with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.
The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention.
Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some corals with modified symbiotic algae back on the Great Barrier Reef.
With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs.
“All the work we are going to do here,” said Hawaii's Drury, “is not going to make a difference if we don’t wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale.
“So really, what we’re trying to do is buy time.”
UN chief says global warming goal on 'life support'
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) is “on life support” with climate talks in Glasgow so far not reaching any of the U.N.’s three goals, but he added that “until the last moment, hope should be maintained.”
In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Guterres said the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland “are in a crucial moment” and need to accomplish more than securing a weak deal that participating nations agree to support.
Read: Climate talks draft agreement expresses ‘alarm and concern’
“The worst thing would be to reach an agreement at all costs by a minimum common denominator that would not respond to the huge challenges we face,” Guterres said.
That’s because the overarching goal of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) by the end of the century “is still on reach but on life support,” Guterres said. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), leaving less than a degree before the threshold is hit.
Read: US envoy calls for joint action to tackle climate crisis right now
“It is the moment to reach agreement by increasing ambition in all areas: mitigation, adaptation and finance in a balanced way,” Guterres said in the 25-minute AP interview.
A U.S.-China agreement announced Wednesday provided some hope of the negotiations yielding significant progress.
Earth gets hotter, deadlier during decades of climate talks
World leaders have been meeting for 29 years to try to curb global warming, and in that time Earth has become a much hotter and deadlier planet.
Trillions of tons of ice have disappeared over that period, the burning of fossil fuels has spewed billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the air, and hundreds of thousands of people have died from heat and other weather disasters stoked by climate change, statistics show.
When more than 100 world leaders descended on Rio de Janeiro in 1992 for an Earth Summit to discuss global warming and other environmental issues, there was “a huge feeling of well-being, of being able to do something. There was hope really,” said Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, one of the representatives for Native Americans at the summit.
Now, the 91-year-old activist said, that hope has been smothered: “The ice is melting. ... Everything is bad. ... Thirty years of degradation.”
Data analyzed by The Associated Press from government figures and scientific reports shows “how much we did lose Earth,” said former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly, who headed the American delegation three decades ago.
That Earth Summit set up the process of international climate negotiations that culminated in the 2015 Paris accord and resumes Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, where leaders will try to ramp up efforts to cut carbon pollution.
Back in 1992, it was clear climate change was a problem “with major implications for lives and livelihoods in the future,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the AP this month. “That future is here and we are out of time.”
Read: ‘Everything is at stake’ as world gathers for climate talks
World leaders have hammered out two agreements to curb climate change. In Kyoto in 1997, a protocol set carbon pollution cuts for developed countries but not poorer nations. That did not go into effect until 2005 because of ratification requirements. In 2015, the Paris agreement made every nation set its own emission goals.
In both cases, the United States, a top-polluting country, helped negotiate the deals but later pulled out of the process when a Republican president took office. The U.S. has since rejoined the Paris agreement.
Oil giants deny spreading disinformation on climate change
Top executives of ExxonMobil and other oil giants denied spreading disinformation about climate change as they sparred Thursday with congressional Democrats over allegations that the industry concealed evidence about the dangers of global warming.
Testifying at a landmark House hearing, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said the company “has long acknowledged the reality and risks of climate change, and it has devoted significant resources to addressing those risks.″
The oil giant’s public statements on climate “are and have always been truthful, fact-based ... and consistent” with mainstream climate science, Woods said.
Also read: Records show slow response to report of California oil spill
Democrats immediately challenged the statements by Woods and other oil executives, accusing them of engaging in a decades-long, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.
“They are obviously lying like the tobacco executives were,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee.
She was referring to a 1994 hearing with tobacco executives who famously testified that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive. The reference was one of several to the tobacco hearing as Democrats sought to pin down oil executives on whether they believe in climate change and that burning fossil fuels such as oil contributes to global warming.
Maloney said at the end of the nearly seven-hour hearing that she will issue subpoenas for documents requested by the committee but not furnished by the oil companies.
Republicans accused Democrats of grandstanding over an issue popular with their base as President Joe Biden’s climate agenda teeters in Congress.
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Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the top Republican on the oversight panel, called the hearing a “distraction from the crises that the Biden administration’s policies have caused," including gasoline prices that have risen by $1 per gallon since January.
“The purpose of this hearing is clear: to deliver partisan theater for primetime news,″ Comer said.
The hearing comes after months of public efforts by Democrats to obtain documents and other information on the oil industry’s role in stopping climate action over multiple decades. The fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change since at least 1977, yet spread denial and doubt about the harm its products cause— undermining science and preventing meaningful action on climate change, Maloney and other Democrats said.
“Do you agree that (climate change) is an existential threat? Yes or no?" Maloney asked Shell Oil President Gretchen Watkins.
“I agree that this is a defining challenge for our generation, absolutely,'' Watkins replied.
Watkins, Woods and other oil executives said they agreed with Maloney on the existence and threat posed by climate change, but they refused her request to pledge that their companies would not spend money — either directly or indirectly — to oppose efforts to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
“We're pledging to advocate for low-carbon policies that do in fact take the company and the world to net-zero” carbon emissions, said BP America CEO David Lawler.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who leads a subcommittee on the environment, said he hopes "Big Oil will not follow the same playbook as Big Tobacco'' in misrepresenting the facts to Congress.
“As I’m sure you realize, that didn’t turn out too well for them,'' Khanna said. “These companies must be held accountable.”
The committee released a memo Thursday charging that the oil industry’s public support for climate reforms has not been matched by meaningful actions, and that the industry has spent billions of dollars to block reforms. Oil companies frequently boast about their efforts to produce clean energy in advertisements and social media posts accompanied by sleek videos or pictures of wind turbines.
Maloney and other Democrats have focused particular ire on Exxon, after a senior lobbyist for the company was caught in a secret video bragging that Exxon had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and had targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken Biden’s climate agenda, including a a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate and social policy bill currently moving through Congress.
In the video, Keith McCoy, a former Washington-based lobbyist for Exxon, dismissed the company's public expressions of support for a proposed carbon tax on fossil fuel emissions as a “talking point.”
McCoy’s comments were made public in June by the environmental group Greenpeace UK, which secretly recorded him and another lobbyist in Zoom interviews. McCoy no longer works for the company, Exxon said last month.
Woods, Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, has condemned McCoy’s statements and said the company stands by its commitment to work on finding solutions to climate change.
Chevron CEO Michael Wirth also denied misleading the public on climate change. "Any suggestion that Chevron has engaged in an effort to spread disinformation and mislead the public on these complex issues is simply wrong,'' he said.
Maloney and Khanna sharply disputed that. They compared tactics used by the oil industry to those long deployed by the tobacco industry to resist regulation “while selling products that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.″
Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., accused the oil industry of “greenwashing” its climate pollution through misleading ads that focus on renewable energy rather than on its core business, fossil fuels. Shell spends nearly 10 times as much money on oil, gas and chemical production than it does on renewables such as wind and solar power, Porter said, citing the company’s annual report.
“Shell is trying to fool people into thinking that it’s addressing the climate crisis when what it’s actually doing is continuing to put money into fossil fuels,″ she told Watkins.
While U.S. leaders and the oil industry rightly focus on lowering carbon emissions, the world consumes 100 million barrels of oil per day — an amount not likely to decrease any time soon, said Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group.
The industry group supports climate action, Sommers added, "yet legislative proposals that punitively target American industry will reverse our nation’s energy leadership, harm our economy and American workers, and weaken our national security.''
Physics Nobel rewards work on climate change, other forces
Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.
Syukuro Manabe, originally from Japan, and Klaus Hasselmann of Germany were cited for their work in developing forecast models of Earth’s climate and "reliably predicting global warming.” The second half of the prize went to Giorgio Parisi of Italy for explaining disorder in physical systems, ranging from those as small as the insides of atoms to the planet-sized.
Hasselmann told The Associated Press that he “would rather have no global warming and no Nobel Prize.’’
Manabe said that figuring out the physics behind climate change was “1,000 times” easier than getting the world to do something about it. He said the intricacies of policy and society are far harder to fathom than the complexities of carbon dioxide interacting with the atmosphere, which then changes conditions in the ocean and on the land, which then alters the air again in a constant cycle.
He called climate change “a major crisis.”
Read: Nobel physics prize goes to 3 for climate discoveries
The prize comes less than four weeks before the start of high-level climate negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, where world leaders will be asked to ramp up their commitments to curb global warming.
The Nobel-winning scientists used their moment in the limelight to urge action.
“It’s very urgent that we take very strong decisions and move at a very strong pace” in tackling global warming, Parisi said. He made the appeal even though his share of the prize was for work in a different area of physics.
All three scientists work on what are known as “complex systems,” of which climate is just one example. But the prize went to two fields of study that are opposite in many ways, though they share the goal of making sense of what seems random and chaotic so that it can be predicted.
Parisi’s research largely centers around subatomic particles, predicting how they move in seemingly chaotic ways and why, and is somewhat esoteric, while the work by Manabe and Hasselmann is about large-scale global forces that shape our daily lives.
The judges said Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, “laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how human actions influence it."
Starting in the 1960s, Manabe, now based at Princeton University, created the first climate models that forecast what would happen as carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere.
Scientists for decades had shown that carbon dioxide traps heat, but Manabe's work offered specifics. It allowed scientists to eventually show how climate change will worsen and how fast, depending on how much carbon pollution is spewed.
Manabe is such a pioneer that other climate scientists called his 1967 paper with the late Richard Wetherald “the most influential climate paper ever,” said NASA chief climate modeler Gavin Schmidt. Manabe's Princeton colleague Tom Delworth called Manabe “the Michael Jordan of climate.”
“Suki set the stage for today's climate science, not just the tool but also how to use it,” said fellow Princeton climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. “I can't count the times that I thought I came up with something new, and it's in one of his papers.”
Read: 2 win medicine Nobel for showing how we react to heat, touch
Manabe's models from 50 years ago “accurately predicted the warming that actually occurred in the following decades," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute. Manabe's work serves “as a warning to us all that we should take their projections of a much warmer future if we keep emitting carbon dioxide quite seriously.”
“I never imagined that this thing I would begin to study has such a huge consequence,” Manabe said at a Princeton news conference. "I was doing it just because of my curiosity.”
About a decade after Manabe's initial work, Hasselmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, helped explain why climate models can be reliable despite the seemingly chaotic nature of the weather. He also developed ways to look for specific signs of human influence on the climate.
Meanwhile, Parisi, of Sapienza University of Rome, “built a deep physical and mathematical model” that made it possible to understand complex systems in fields as different as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.
His work originally focused on so-called spin glass, a type of metal alloy whose behavior long baffled scientists. Parisi, 73, discovered hidden patterns that explained the way it acted, creating theories that could be applied to other fields of research, too.
All three physicists used complex mathematics to explain and predict what seemed like chaotic forces of nature. That is known as modeling.
“Physics-based climate models made it possible to predict the amount and pace of global warming, including some of the consequences like rising seas, increased extreme rainfall events and stronger hurricanes, decades before they could be observed,” said German climate scientist and modeler Stefan Rahmstorf. He called Hasselmann and Manabe pioneers in this field.
When climate scientists with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, some who deny global warming dismissed it as a political move. Perhaps anticipating controversy, members of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel, emphasized that Tuesday's was a science prize.
“What we are saying is that the modeling of climate is solidly based on physical theory and well-known physics,” Swedish physicist Thors Hans Hansson said at the announcement.
Read: Nobel Prize honors discovery of temperature, touch receptors
For a scientist who trades in predictions, Hasselmann said the prize caught him off guard.
“I was quite surprised when they called,” he said. “I mean, this is something I did many years ago.”
But Parisi said: “I knew there was a non-negligible possibility” of winning.
The award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.
On Monday, the Nobel in medicine was awarded to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.
Over the coming days prizes will be awarded in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
UN to world leaders: To curtail warming, you must do more
Pressure keeps building on increasingly anxious world leaders to ratchet up efforts to fight climate change. There's more of it coming this week in one of the highest-profile forums of all — the United Nations.
For the second time in four days, this time out of U.N. headquarters in New York, leaders will hear pleas to make deeper cuts of emissions of heat-trapping gases and give poorer countries more money to develop cleaner energy and adapt to the worsening impacts of climate change.
“I'm not desperate, but I'm tremendously worried,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press in a weekend interview. “We are on the verge of the abyss and we cannot afford a step in the wrong direction.”
Also read: UN chief warns China, US to avoid new Cold War
So on Monday, Guterres and United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson are hosting a closed-door session with 35 to 40 world leaders to get countries to do more leading up to the huge climate negotiations in Scotland in six weeks. Those negotiations in the fall are designed to be the next step after the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
And all this comes after Friday, when U.S. President Joe Biden convened a private forum on climate to coax leaders to act now.
“We are rapidly running out of time,” Guterres said at Biden’s forum. “There is a high risk of failure” of negotiations in Glasgow.
This week’s focus on climate change comes at the end of another summer of disasters related to extreme weather, including devastating wildfires in the western United States, deadly flooding in the U.S., China and Europe, a drumbeat of killer tropical cyclones worldwide and unprecedented heat waves everywhere.
Achieving some kind of success in emission-cut pledges or financial help during the week of U.N. sessions would ease the path to an agreement in Glasgow, just as early announcements of pollution curbs did in 2015, especially those from China and the United States, experts said. Now those two nations are key again. But, Guterres said, their relationship is “totally dysfunctional.”
Nigel Purvis, a former U.S. State Department climate negotiator and CEO of the private firm Climate Advisers, said the political forces going into Glasgow don’t look as optimistic as they did four months ago after a Biden virtual climate summit.
But, he says, there is still hope. Countries like China, the world’s top carbon emitter, have to strengthen their Paris pledges to cut carbon pollution, while rich nations like the United States that did increase their emissions promises need to do more financially to help poorer countries.
Also read: ‘Code red’: UN scientists warn of worsening global warming
“The Glasgow meeting is not shaping up to be as well politically prepared as the Paris conference was in 2015,” Purvis said. And Pete Ogden, vice president of the United Nations Foundation for Energy and Climate, cited "worrying mistrust between nations at a time when greater solidarity is needed.”
As the world's leaders gather, activists, other government leaders and business officials gather in New York City for Climate Week, a giant cheerleading session for action that coincides with the high-level U.N. meeting. And throughout the week the push is on the rich nations, the G-20, to do more.
“It is true that the G-20 countries bear the biggest part of the responsibility for carbon emissions. And in that regard, of course it is absolutely crucial that we see them accelerating in a very important way their actions,” U.N. climate conference chief Patricia Espinosa said Friday as her agency announced that emission pledges for the Scotland conference were falling far short of the Paris goals.
The most stringent one seeks to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. That translates to about 0.4 degree Celsius (0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from now because of warming that’s already happened.
A UN report on Friday showed that current pledges to cut carbon emissions set the world on a path toward 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since the pre-industrial era. That shoots way past even the weaker Paris goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
“That is catastrophic,” Guterres said in the interview. “The world could not live with a 2.7-degree increase in temperature.”
The overall goal is to have “net zero” carbon emissions by the middle of the 21st century. That refers to a moment when the world’s economies are putting the same amount of carbon dioxide into the air as plants and oceans take out of it, thus not adding to global warming.
Guterres is pushing for rich nations to fulfill their longtime pledges of $100 billion a year in climate aid to poor nations, with at least half of that going to help them cope with the impacts of global warming. So far, the world is falling about $75 billion a year short, according to a new study by Oxfam. Funding to cope with climate change's impacts fell 25% last year for small island nations, “the most vulnerable of the vulnerable,” he said.
Under the Paris agreement, every five years the nations of the world must come up with even more stringent emission cuts and more funding for the poorer nations to develop cleaner energy systems and adapt to climate change.
While the leaders convene for the U.N. meetings, activists, business leaders and lower-level government officials will be part of the cheerleading in a “climate week” series of events. Planners include big name corporations announcing billions of dollars worth of commitments to fighting climate change, lots of talk by big names such as Bill Gates about climate solutions, and even all seven late-night U.S. talk show hosts focusing on climate change Wednesday night.
“You’ve got the world leaders there, and so you can remind them about climate and get them focused on it” said Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group , which is coordinating climate week.
What counts most is what happens in six weeks in Glasgow, says Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environment at the University of Michigan, “But," he said, "the more that can be agreed upon early, the easier it will be to get the commitments that are needed to put an end to climate change. ... We’re not yet on an emissions reductions path that is safe for our planet and its people."
Impact of climate change on crop production in Bangladesh
Bangladesh's economic growth is largely dependent on the growth of the agricultural sector. Agriculture, directly and indirectly, provides basic human needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Agriculture contributed 13.47% to Bangladesh's gross domestic product or GDP directly and indirectly in 2020-2021. At the same time, about 50% of the people of Bangladesh are engaged in agriculture. But in recent decades, Bangladesh has been facing a low growth rate in agriculture due to global climate change.
Rising temperatures have made the climate and weather conditions abnormal and unstable, with adverse effects on agriculture. This is because the growth of a particular crop requires a moderate number of natural elements such as temperature, rainfall, humidity, airflow, and so on. Due to climate change, the temperature is changing, which leads to a change in the amount of rainfall and type. Eventually, this change created an adverse effect on agricultural work.
Climate change has created an adverse effect in the Bangladeshi agriculture sector in many ways. Let's deep dive into it.
Read: How to stop global warming? How to combat climate change in Bangladesh?
The impact of climate change
Although climate change is a regular natural phenomenon, it is greatly influenced by human actions. Various human activities have accelerated climate change. Overall global warming and climate change affect developing countries like Bangladesh. The effect of climate change in Bangladesh has already begun; it has already hit the agriculture sector.
According to a research report published, the sea level rise has been observed at a rate of 7.8 mm per year of the coast of Cox's Bazar. In the last four decades, around 3000 km2 of land area under Bhola island have been submerged into the Bay of Bengal. After reviewing various research reports, it can be seen that by 2100, the sea level could rise 1 meter, which could submerge 18.3 percent of the total area of Bangladesh.
Read COP26: Global competition launched to find top climate science communicators
Impact of floods on agriculture
Due to climate change, sudden flooding has become a common phenomenon in Bangladesh that affects agriculture. About 1,400 sq km in the southeastern part of the country and 4,000 sq km in the northeastern part of the country face flash floods. However, flash floods are more harmful than regular floods. As for the regular flood, it starts slowly, and the farmers can estimate a time. On the other hand, the sudden flash flood impacts the crops as well as the effect on the lands.
Tidal floods caused extensive damage to coastal areas. Saline water creates water logging in the land and makes the soil unsuitable for plantation and crop cultivation. Districts like Sunamganj, Sylhet, Netrokona, Nilphamari, etc., are usually affected by flash floods. Due to the flash flood every year, thousands of acres of ripe Boro paddy get affected. Bangladesh is affluent in water resources, but the impacts of climate change are causing excess rainfall, floods, and water logging. At present, about 2.6 million hectares of land in Bangladesh are flooded every year.
Read: Climate Change: How Bangladesh is being affected by Global Warming?
Impact of temperature on Agriculture
Rising temperatures will reduce the yield of upland rice and increase the rate of diseases in wheat. Moreover, wheat cultivation will not be possible in Bangladesh if the temperature rises by 2 degrees Celsius than the current temperature. The increasing level of carbon dioxide and rising temperature hamper the regular growth of the rice plants. The common problems are weakening seedlings, turn yellow, and prolong crop life. As a result of climate change, various plant diseases is increasing alongside the incidence of insects.
Infestations of millibugs, aphids (sucking insects) and bacteria (bacterial diseases) and fungal diseases are more prevalent in various crops.
Excess heat and humidity play a role in increasing fungal diseases of plants and similarly increase the number of insects and carriers of various diseases. In addition, if warm flow occurs in the winter season, the yield of more sensitive crops like wheat is greatly reduced, and wheat production becomes unprofitable. Increasing the temperature increases the perspiration or water discharge of the plant. It results in the scarcity of irrigation water.
Read: Climate change: 'Children in Bangladesh, 3 other countries at extremely high risk'
Impact of drought in agriculture
Drought occurs in an area where the evaporation rate is higher than the rainfall. Agricultural drought refers to the disruption of the biological activity of the crops due to a lack of water in any stage of the crop life cycle. It happens due to an increase in weather regulators such as rainfall, temperature, humidity, evaporation, etc. If there is no rain for 15 days between April and mid-November, there is a possibility of drought, which is one of the most common natural disasters in agriculture.
Every year 1.2-2.32 million hectares of land are affected by various levels of drought.
If there is a lack of regular average rainfall in the growth stage, the plant faces dehydration. This can damage the plant. Aman paddy is cultivated in 60% of the 83 lakh hectares of drought-affected cultivable land in the country. In addition, drought-affected Autumn rice and Boro paddy, jute, pulses, and oil crops, potatoes, winter vegetables, and sugarcane. Furthermore, if there is no rain in March or April, it becomes difficult to cultivate the land on time. As a result, sown man, autumn paddy, and jute cannot be cultivated in time.
Read: Govt. moves to boost climate resilience of vulnerable people, says official document
Saltwater infiltration and increase in salinity in agriculture
Saltwater infiltration is a serious problem in Bangladesh. In 1973, about 1.5 million hectares of land were affected by mild salinity that increased to 2.5 million hectares in 1997. Currently, 3 million hectares of land are affected. Due to the obstruction of water on the coaster area, the saline land is increasing. It mainly happens due to water flow from upstream and low rainfall. If things stay like that, it will create more problems in the future.
Bangladesh's geographical location, socio-economic infrastructure, and dependency on natural resources are the main reasons for having negative effects of climate change.
Read Financial support to vulnerable countries must for effective climate adaptation: Shahab
How to stop global warming? How to combat climate change in Bangladesh?
Global warming is experiencing its peak time. It is so high that temperatures could break all past records in the next decade. According to the United Nations, the current rate of global warming is "Code red for humanity." If this trend continues, global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030, ahead of the previously predicted period. Although different countries, organizations are taking various steps to prevent global warming. However, if we take steps at an individual level, global warming can be stopped and greatly reduced.
How to stop global warming?
The goal is very simple. Carbon dioxide is the biggest enemy of climate. And reducing the emission of carbon dioxide improves the climate. So, we have to work on reducing the emission and stop using such products that release a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Following small steps can lead to a big help toward the environment.
Use renewable energy
From the international perspective, companies that use wind or solar energy for most of their power generation are required to provide electrical services at home. As a result, access to Green e-Energy will increase. If this is not possible, keep an eye on your electricity bill. Many companies write on the bill how much renewable energy is used in their power generation. That's how you can focus on renewable energy.
Read Govt. moves to boost climate resilience of vulnerable people, says official document
Steps according to the weather
It takes a lot of electricity to increase the temperature of the house during cold or to cool during hot weather. You can make your home more energy-efficient, make the house have easy access to ventilation and heating.
Use fuel-saving equipment
Energy-saving equipment was first introduced in the United States in 1987. The use of a number of such devices has so far reduced 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air, which is emitted by 440 million vehicles a year. It is an easy way to prevent carbon emissions at a very low cost. That's why you should check the 'Energy Star' level whole buying refrigerators, washing machines, and similar appliances.
Reduce water consumption
Carbon pollution can be reduced by preventing water wastage, as it costs a lot of energy to pump, heat, or cool water. So consuming unnecessary water will help to save energy, and you don't need to run the pump often. Hence, carbon emissions will be reduced.
Read: Climate Change: How Bangladesh is being affected by Global warming
Use energy-efficient bulbs
LED bulbs consume up to 80 percent less electricity than all other bulbs. These bulbs are durable. 10-watt LED bulbs work like a normal 60-watt bulb, and it costs much less.
Keep the plug detached
Adding all the appliances in the house, you may find numerous appliances which run on electricity. To reduce energy consumption, don't charge devices that are fully charged or set a timer to stop charging after a certain period of time. In addition, computers or tablets, phone monitors in low power mode also consume less fuel.
Use of fuel-efficient vehicles
Driving a gas-smart car, such as a hybrid or electric vehicle, saves both fuel and money. Walk or use public transport as much as you can in big cities. As a result, the cost will be reduced, and the waste of fuel will be less. The biggest thing is that it will reduce air pollution a lot. In addition, if a lot of people reduce their flight, then a big difference can be noticed because air travel is one of the major means of climate pollution. If you have the option to go by train as an alternative to the plane, choose that.
Read COP26: Global competition launched to find top climate science communicators
What can we do about climate change in Bangladesh?
When it comes to the issue of climate change, Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world. According to the World Bank, by 2050, 5.3 million people in Bangladesh will be directly affected by climate change. This will have a negative impact on water, soil, and crops. Coastal people will lose their homes, and the drinking water crisis will increase. So, the Bangladesh government and different non-government organizations have already taken initiatives.
To fight climate change in Bangladesh, the government has finalized Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan 2009 (BCCSAP, 2009). Furthermore, Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) was set up in 2010. The goals and objectives of BCCTF are to increase the capacity of local people to address the risks of climate change and to innovate and expand climate tolerant technologies. The vision of the fund is to build a Bangladesh capable of dealing with the impact of climate change.
Read ICCB seeks climate change mitigation, role of private sector
Trust Act-2010 was enacted to ensure the smooth management of the BCCTF.
Besides, the National Disaster Management Act of Bangladesh has created opportunities for various government ministries and departments to work together to reduce disaster risk as well as climate change. Various policies and plans of the government, including the 17th 5Y Plan have included issues of climate change and a sustainable environment.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center is conducting research to identify what Bangladesh's priorities should be to combat climate change. The prime solution they gave was to conserve mangroves. Bangladesh can work on conserving the mangroves in the coastal areas.
Read Financial support to vulnerable countries must for effective climate adaptation: Shahab
We can also work on replanting trees, which will eventually carbonize the environment and work as a natural shield against cyclones. They also proposed to create precautionary measures and build shelters where people can take shelter in the event of a cyclone.
Many do not use existing shelters because they cannot afford to keep their livestock and other valuable livestock there, so the proposed structure would accommodate both humans and cattle. The Bangladesh government, along with many non-government organizations, have already taken measurable steps about this.
Read: Climate change: 'Children in Bangladesh, 3 other countries at extremely high risk'
Final Words
Ultimately, it is undeniable that if we want to achieve the goal of sustainable development or to control global warming, there is no substitute to change in our behavior and habits. Human behavior and habits need to be taken into account in formulating policies on climate change mitigation and energy efficiency. It should be noted that the effort required to bring about a behavioral change in people is much less than the technological change. But the rewards and co-benefits of habitual and behavioral change are much higher.