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Accelerating climate change
20/05/25
Link:
May, 2025
WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial level
https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-...
There is no question more urgent than the one indicated by that red arrow in the graphic above.
The increased rate of global warming has shocked even the experts. Global temperatures in 2023, 2024 and 2025 so far has shattered previous records, and not by a little. Scientists have long known that greenhouse gas emissions are driving global warming, but the recent spike is faster and larger than anyone expected. Something is accelerating climate change, and we don’t fully understand what it is.
Pioneering climate scientist James Hansen—the man who first warned the U.S. Senate about global warming in 1988—is now raising a terrifying new alarm. He points to “cloud feedback” as the likely culprit: rising temperatures are thinning the clouds that once helped cool our planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. With fewer clouds, more heat stays in the system—triggering even faster warming.
If Hansen is right, the implications are staggering. The Earth’s climate could be 50% more sensitive to CO₂ than previously estimated by the IPCC. That would mean all our current climate models severely underestimate how bad things could get.
Even more troubling: Hansen says his latest findings are being dismissed as just another opinion—despite their scientific grounding. Rather than sparking an urgent fact based debate, his warnings are being quietly sidelined in policy circles and the media. As a result, the public may not be hearing the full truth about how rapidly the climate crisis is accelerating. Read Hansen’s full study here.
Source: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
Other researchers point to a sharp rise in Earth’s energy imbalance, only partly due to cloud feedback. In 2023, the imbalance reached 1.8 watts per square meter—double what climate models had predicted. That means Earth is absorbing more energy than ever before, fueling higher temperatures, melting ice, and powering more extreme weather.
Johan Rockström delivered a powerful wake-up call at We Don't Have Time Davos Hub during the World Economic Forum. As one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Rockström emphasized that the recent spike in warming is not just unprecedented—it’s deeply puzzling. The speed and magnitude suggest that something in the Earth system is shifting faster than science can explain. Watch his full presentation below where he explains what we do know and what we don't know fully.
But here’s the twist: just as the climate crisis accelerates, we’re at risk of losing our ability to track what’s happening.
The satellites that measure Earth’s energy imbalance—a critical indicator of how much heat the planet is absorbing—are aging fast. By the early 2030s, we may be relying on just one remaining satellite to monitor what James Hansen calls “the single most important number in climate science.” Even worse, there are no confirmed plans to replace them.
At the same time, the U.S. administration is planning to end the land lease for the Mauna Loa Observatory, home to the world’s longest continuous record of atmospheric CO₂—our planet’s “climate heartbeat.” This puts the future of that critical monitoring site in serious jeopardy. Watch our ' Make Science Great Again' Paris panel explaining this alarming decision.
Meanwhile, climate science itself is under political attack. Funding is being cut. Monitoring systems are being threatened. And the scientists we rely on to sound the alarm? They’re being ignored, sidelined, or dismissed as just another opinion—right when we need them most.
You don’t fight a fire by ripping out the smoke detectors—and we won’t solve the climate crisis by silencing the science.
