There are fires. The heat waves. Life-threatening floods. The consequences of burning fossil fuels and pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are all around us. Climate change is linked to more powerful and wetter storms, longer and more intense droughts and rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide.
The pace of climate change was painfully clear in 2021.
If we reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, we can mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. The window to avoid climate catastrophe is closing, but it's still not too late to change course.
The warming targets of the Paris Agreement were surpassed.
The image is from Shutterstock.
When world leaders signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, they committed to long-term and short-term plans for reducing consumption of fossil fuels and the production of greenhouse gasses linked to climate change. Their goal is to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The global average temperature is already 1.7 F (1 C) warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution, and the 2015 goal is out of reach. Scientists reported in January in the journal Nature Climate Change that as the planet loses ice and snow, it reflects less heat back into space and absorbs it instead.
The study found that we have already exceeded the warming targets set by the Paris climate agreement.
The world map shows the percentiles of global average land and ocean temperatures for 2020. The blocks show increasing warmth from dark blue to dark red. The image is from the NCEI.
NASA climate scientists said that 2020 was the hottest year of all time. The global average surface temperature in 2020 was warmer than the 20th century average, according to researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In a separate assessment, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2020 was the second-hottest year after 2016 with temperatures that were 1.76 F (0.98 C) higher than average.
NASA climate scientists say that 2020 was the hottest year ever.
Sea level rise is faster.
In Venice, Louisiana, an abandoned boat sits in the water amid dead cypress trees, in a region that is already impacted by sea level rise. Drew Angerer is the photographer.
A February study shows that we've probably beenunderestimating how quickly sea level rise could happen. Scientists think that oceans will rise even more rapidly than the models thought, because of the events of the past. Researchers were able to estimate a rate for future sea-level rise that was unexplored in previous computations by evaluating historical data and looking at how quickly seas rose and fell as ancient Earth warmed and cooled. According to the study, the existing sea-level models predicted more conservative maximums than the new models did.
Climate models predict that the seas will rise faster than the actual reality.
The Gulf Stream is slowing down.
The Gulf Stream current speeds warm water up the eastern coast of the United States, where it collides with cold water in the North Atlantic. The image is from the NASA Earth Observatory.
The Gulf Stream is one of the most important ocean currents that regulates the climate on Earth. If global warming continues at its current pace, the Gulf Stream could stop completely by the year 2200. Climate and weather are regulated by the Gulf Stream. As Earth warms, melting freshwater ice pours into the ocean, lowering the water's salinity and disrupting the flow of water. If the Gulf Stream fails, it could cause more extreme weather, such as hurricanes and heatwaves, and accelerate sea level rise in coastal Europe and North America.
The Gulf Stream is slowing and could disappear.
Human influence is not equivocal.
A deer wanders through heavy smoke in front of a row of burned cars during the Dixie fire in California on August 6. The largest wildfire in the state's history has been burning since July. The photo was taken by Josh Edelson.
A report written by over 200 climate experts who reviewed more than 14,000 studies shows that the evidence shows that humans are driving climate change. In August, the UN body focusing on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released the first part of its sixth assessment report, which stated that human-driven changes are affecting all of Earth's planetary systems. The burning of fossil fuels has pumped so much CO2 into the atmosphere that it is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years, according to a report co-authored by hundreds of researchers.
The report says that human influence on global warming is not equivocal.
The air in the Amazon is polluted with greenhouse gases faster than the trees can absorb them. The image is from the Getty.
The "lungs of the planet" are the tropical rainforests, which produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more CO2 than it is absorbing, releasing more than one billion tons of CO2 per year, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The shift was caused by large-scale human disturbances and most of the wildfires were set in order to clear land for industry and agriculture.
The Amazon rainforest is creating more greenhouse gases than it is absorbing.
The last ice area is melting.
The photo was taken from the German ship the Polarstern, which passed through the area as part of the year-long MOSAiC expedition. The area used to be completely covered in ice. Satellite images show that August 14, 2020 was a record low sea ice concentration. Felix Linhardt/Kiel University.
It was thought that the frozen zone to the north of Greenland would remain mostly frozen even as the climate warmed. The Last Ice Area may not survive the current rate of global warming. In 2020, the eastern part of the Last Ice Area reached its lowest ice cover since record-keeping began, with 50% of the sea ice melting away during the summer months. Scientists recently analyzed the ice loss and found that the melting of the ice caused the thickness of the permanent ice in the region to decrease over time. The Last Ice Area could become ice-free as soon as 2040, because prior models underestimated the rate of ice loss.
Climate change may affect the Last Ice Area.
Earthshine gets darker.
The image was taken from the International Space Station. The image is from NASA.
Climate change has been linked to a decrease in Earth's brightness. Our planet reflects sunlight onto the dark side of the moon. Researchers measured earthshine and tracked variations in brightness based on the reflectiveness of clouds in the atmosphere and of water, land and snow on Earth's surface. They compared the earthshine observations with other data that recorded changes in the cloud cover.
Earth's light has gone down over the past two decades, reflecting half a watt less light per square meter. The scientists found that the decline in bright low-altitude clouds over the eastern Pacific Ocean was related to the dimming. The scientists reported in August that the drop in clouds is likely linked to other atmospheric changes caused by climate change.
Climate change is making Earth dimmer.
It's still not too late.
Frank Lee is the photographer.
We can't change the climate back to the conditions of the Industrial Age, but we can do something about it. Earth will be 3.6 F (2 C) hotter by the year 2050 under the current warming trend. We can still slow or stop some of the global changes that are already underway if we reduce fossil fuel use and limit the rise of global temperature averages to no more than 2.5 F above pre-Industrial levels.
Sea level rise could reach 7 feet by the year 2200. Climate experts wrote in the report that allowing Earth to cool down could slow down the process of greenhouse gases. New computer models are being developed to create predictions about ice melt and sea level rise, and to explore how human communities might adapt to these changes.
Michael Mann, a climatologist at The Pennsylvania State University, told Live Science that in order to get there, humanity needs to take action, and that begins with dramatically curtailing our use of fossil fuels on a global scale.
The priority should be cutting emissions. Getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies is a part of that. Mann told Live Science in October that incentives for renewables and carbon pricing are also. He wouldn't want to put the onus on any of the mechanisms. "We need them all."
Live Science published the original article.
