In the wake of climate-fueled disasters and several
alarming reports on climate change, a gap is evident -- a gap between
how the world is responding to the climate crisis and how it should.
A new study appearing in Nature Climate Change
(Feb. 25, 2019) examined three sets of satellite data using three teams
of scientists. The scientists' findings now have a five-sigma level of
confidence that climate change has anthropogenic cause;
labeled a statistical "gold standard" it means a one-in-a-million
chance of error. Having proved conclusively that human activities are
responsible, they hope their work will spur change. There is now plenty
of new and accumulated evidence of global warming, and of human
involvement.
Heat-trapping gases concentrating in the atmosphere cause an energy imbalance manipulated in a warming earth. About 93% of this heat is accumulated in the oceans. The rising ocean heat content (OHC) becomes a record of global warming. New research based on OHC observations over time shows a disturbing acceleration in ocean warming. Without proactive measures to reduce global warming, the report demonstrates an increasing rate at which oceans warm for each scenario it simulated. It warns of major global impacts such as a sea level rise of 30cm by 2100, unprecedented severe weather events, and coastal flooding.
Overall temperature in the oceans is now the highest since record-keeping began. Moreover, ocean levels are already 7cms (about 3 inches) higher than in the 1990s (keyfinding 1), human-caused climate change being a major culprit. The rise appears to be accelerating, now at the rate of 3.9 millimeters a year or about an inch in 6 years.
Coastal
land flooding and loss is no longer just a problem faced by The
Maldives in the Indian Ocean, or Pacific Islands.
Low-lying coastal cities in the US have begun to flood at high-tide. This nuisance tidal flooding is expected to increase 5 to 10 fold (keyfinding 4).
Tell-tale signs of the exacerbation of weather events are already here: Hurricanes intensify quickly and then move slowly shedding unprecedented amounts of rain. It happened with Harvey over Houston in 2017, and with Florence over North Carolina in 2018. What might come as a surprise is the fact that half of the world's annual rainfall and snow pelts us on the 12 wettest days of the year and by century's end the same amount of precipitation will occur in 11 days. So reported scientists last November. A warming atmosphere means it can hold more moisture; thus more intense deluges will further test the ability of the soil to absorb the water, leading to an increased likelihood of worse flooding.
Changing weather patterns also have other consequences. In California, large fires now burn twice the area
they did 50 years ago, and are expected to triple that by 2050. Future
projections point to both bigger fires and a longer fire season. And then who would have expected a heat wave in Canada
to kill more than 90 people in 2018? It is not alone. The UK suffered debilitating summer heat in 2018 and 2017, and a heat wave hit southern Europe in 2018 where Portugal and Greece were also hit by wildfires.
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