Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.
Right now, every moment of every day, we humans are reconfiguring Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and wetter storms. Higher seas and fiercer wildfires. The steady, upward turn of the dial on a host of threats to our homes, our societies and the environment around us.
We might also be changing the climate in an even bigger way.
The PR pros will tell you not to bother talking about arcane topics like 1.5 degrees — no normies understand the significance, and it just sounds like a little-bitty thing, anyway. They’re probably right. And maybe that explains why we just lived through the first full year above 1.5 C with only perfunctory coverage by the global media.
New data shows the planet’s fever stayed above a crucial target for a full year, but it would need to do that for decades to breach the Paris Agreement limit.
Last month wasn’t only the hottest June by far in the observed temperature record, but marked the first-ever 12-month stretch of the Earth’s average temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise above the pre-industrial baseline against which human-caused warming is measured.
Meteorologists warn that heat will spread east through the week, with ‘heat dome’ expected to trap high temperatures
Millions of Americans are facing “dangerously hot conditions”, the National Weather Service said, with a heatwave set to hit the midwest and north-east US from Monday.
'We're shattering global temperature records and reaping the whirlwind,' UN secretary-general says
The planet's string of record-breaking temperatures has continued for a full year, with May marking the 12th consecutive month for which its average temperature set a new record for that month.
Temperatures surpassed the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold over the past year, and scientists warn they will again soon.
A streak of record-setting heat that began last summer has now persisted for an entire year across the globe, researchers announced Wednesday, pushing Earth closer to a dangerous threshold that the world’s nations have pledged not to cross.
As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surge at unprecedented rates, a study suggests some countries may ramp up fossil fuel production by 2050, banking on unproven carbon removal plans and risking net-zero failure.
As scientists track a “very abnormal and unprecedented” rate of sea level rise around the Gulf of Mexico, coastal communities in Canada are reacting to the threat of their own rising tides.
Experts warn that by 2030, 295,000 Canadians will face annual flood risks, with homes and neighbourhoods in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and Nova Scotia at highest risk.
'Sad What We Are Doing': Global CO2 Increase Sets New All-Time Record
"I'd make this the lead story in every paper and newscast on the planet," said Bill McKibben. "If we don't understand the depth of the climate crisis, we will not act in time."
The average monthly concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by a record 4.7 parts per million between March 2023 and March 2024, according to new data from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
Atmospheric CO2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels
Levels of the three most important human-caused greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide – continued their steady climb during 2023, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in air samples in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.
