‘The science is irrefutable’: US warming faster than global average, says report
Oliver MilmanLos Angeles Times
Tue, November 14, 2023
Photograph: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images
The US is warming faster than the global average and its people are suffering “far-reaching and worsening” consequences from the climate crisis, with worse to come, according to an authoritative report issued by the US government.
An array of “increasingly harmful impacts” is hitting every corner of the vast country, from extreme heat and sea level rise in Florida to depleted fish stocks and increased food insecurity in Alaska, the new National Climate Assessment has found.
Related: ‘Insanity’: petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report
While planet-heating US emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007, the reductions are still not enough to meet international targets to avert disastrous climate change, and without deeper cuts in carbon pollution “severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow”, the report states.
“Even if greenhouse gas emissions fall substantially, the impacts of climate change will continue to intensify over the next decade,” the report finds, adding that choices made by the US and other countries will “determine the trajectory of climate change and associated impacts for many generations to come”.
The release of the fifth iteration of the Congressionally-mandated climate assessment, an exhaustive distillation of climate science compiled by more than 750 experts across the US federal government, follows a summer of vivid climate change-fueled events across the country that have included catastrophic, deadly fires in Hawaii, choking wildfire smoke along the US east coast and record-breaking heat in multiple states.
The report shows “more and more people are experiencing climate change right now, right outside their windows”, said Allison Crimmins, a climate scientist and director of the National Climate Assessment. Crimmins said that escalating dangers from wildfires, severe heat, flooding and other impacts mean that the US suffers a disaster costing at least $1bn in damages every three weeks now, on average, compared to once every four months in the 1980s.
“We need to be moving much faster and we need to go much further,” she said. “We know that each degree, each tenth of a degree, of additional warming brings more severe climate impacts to the US and those impacts are felt more acutely by overburdened communities.”
The report, released just weeks before crucial United Nations climate talks in Dubai, is the first of its kind to be released under Joe Biden’s presidency, with the previous assessment put out by Donald Trump’s administration the day after Thanksgiving in 2018.
The White House has used the updated report to trumpet the US president’s efforts to address the climate crisis, announcing more than $5bn in new spending directed at upgrading the electric grid, bolstering resilience to disasters and furthering efforts to combat environmental injustice.
The administration is attempting to quell growing unease among those concerned about climate change about the president’s ongoing approval of oil and gas projects that further extend the lifespan of the fossil fuel era.
Biden is responsible for “historic” investment in clean energy, via the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Ali Zaidi, Biden’s climate adviser, who pointed to the climate assessment’s endorsement of the economic, as well as health, benefits of switching to solar, wind and electric vehicles. “President Biden’s leadership on climate change is about turning crisis into opportunity, investing into the core of America,” Zaidi said.
We need to get to net zero by 2050, which will require transformation of the global economy at a size and scale that’s never occurred in human history
John Podesta
But the administration acknowledges the challenge remains huge. “It’s beyond question the climate crisis is here,” said John Podesta, a clean energy adviser to Biden. “We need to get to net zero by 2050, which will require transformation of the global economy at a size and scale that’s never occurred in human history. It sounds like a daunting task and it is, but the national climate assessment tells us the United States is already making that transformation happen.”
Scientists who worked on the 32-chapter report, which touches on everything from climate change’s impact upon the oceans to agriculture to transportation to cultural practices, say that scientific confidence about the influence of global heating upon extreme weather and other phenomena has only strengthened since the last report in 2018.
“Climate change is here, it’s happening now, it’s unequivocal that humans are causing it,” said Adam Terando, a US Geological Survey scientist and report co-author.
“Those who operate in this sphere think this message gets tiresome, but it’s worth reminding people over and over that we are seeing the response of the physical system to what we are doing to it. Dependence upon fossil fuels has real consequences.”
Kristina Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was not involved in the publication, said the report is “the latest in a series of alarm bells and illustrates that the changes we’re living through are unprecedented in human history”.
She added: “The science is irrefutable: we must swiftly reduce heat-trapping emissions and enact transformational climate adaptation policies in every region of the country to limit the stampede of devastating events and the toll each one takes on our lives and the economy.”
The report’s findings include:
The climate crisis is causing disruption to all regions of the US, from flooding via heavier rainfall in the north-east to prolonged drought in the south-west. A constant is heat – “across all regions of the US, people are experiencing warming temperatures and longer-lasting heatwaves” – with nighttime and winter temperatures rising faster than daytime and summer temperatures.
People’s health is already being harmed by worsened air quality from smog, wildfire smoke, dust and increased pollen, as well as from extreme weather events and the spread of infectious diseases. Children born in 2020 will be exposed to far more climate-related hazards compared to people born in 1965.
There are “profound changes” underway in the water cycle, raising the risk of flooding, drought and degraded water supplies for people in the US. Snow cover in mountains is decreasing, while the nation’s supply of groundwater is under threat from warming temperatures.
Americans’ everyday and recreational activities are at risk, with a changing climate causing invasive species and harmful algal blooms that prevent access to beaches and fishing for certain species. Culturally important species for Indigenous people, some of them subsistence hunters, are shifting in response to temperature changes.
Emissions in the US, the world’s largest historical carbon polluter, have dropped by around 12% since 2005, with the costs associated with wind and solar energy plummeting by 70% and 90%, respectively, over the past decade. The benefits of deep emissions cuts “far outweigh the costs” of shifting to clean energy, the report states.
'Every bit matters': Six key takeaways from the latest U.S. climate report
Hayley Smith, Ian James
Tue, November 14, 2023
Wildfire threatened giant sequoias in Sequoia National Park in September 2021. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The dire effects of human-caused climate change are worsening and they threaten to bring more extreme heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires unless urgent actions are taken, scientists warned in a major national report.
The Fifth National Climate Change Assessment, released Tuesday by the White House, reveals the high stakes for Americans as the nation confronts global warming. Efforts to adapt to climate change and curb the burning of fossil fuels have expanded since the last assessment was issued in 2018, the report says, but "without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow."
In California and the Southwest, increasing temperatures have intensified drought and will lead to a more arid future, while extreme heat will harm crop production and bring widespread economic impacts. However, report authors also wrote that action to prevent additional heating of the planet will bring major benefits by lessening the severity of the changes.
"This report says every 10th of a degree of warming matters. Every bit matters," said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and one of the authors. "It clearly shows that per 10th of a degree of avoided warming, we save, we prevent risk, we prevent suffering. And that's pretty powerful."
The report addresses the environmental, economic and human-health impacts of a changing planet, and contains contributions from more than 700 experts and scientists. Here are six takeaways:
Smoke from Southern California wildfires nearly obscured the Los Angeles skyline when viewed from Griffith Observatory in September 2020. Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times
1. The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts
Rapid warming from greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to large-scale planetary changes, including rising sea levels, melting ice, warming oceans and shifts in the timing of seasonal events, the report says. Emissions are driven by the burning of fossil fuels, as well as deforestation, agricultural practices, manufacturing and other sources.
For humanity, the changes are unprecedented. Atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are the highest they've been in at least 800,000 years. Most of those emissions have occurred since 1970.
The climate change signal is "even clearer today than it was five years ago," Hayhoe said. In the U.S., people across all regions are experiencing hotter temperatures and longer-lasting heat waves, with nighttime and winter temperatures warming the fastest.
Hayhoe said the report "explains how climate change is affecting us now, how it's affecting us here in the places where we live, and how it's affecting every sector of our society, as well as the natural environment that surrounds us.
"It shows us that if we live in the U.S., the risks matter, and they're affecting us already today," she said.
The risks from extreme events are growing, with more billion-dollar disasters occurring each year. In the 1980s, the U.S. experienced an average of one billion-dollar disaster every four months, compared with one every three weeks today. These extreme events are costing the nation close to $150 billion each year, which the report describes as a "conservative estimate" that doesn't account for loss of life, healthcare-related costs and damage to ecosystems.
People born in North America in 2020, on average, will be exposed to more climate-related hazards compared to people born in 1965, an indication of intergenerational inequity. (Fifth National Climate Assessment)
These extreme events are having cascading impacts on daily life, with heat-related illnesses and deaths on the rise, along with longer droughts that are reducing agricultural productivity and straining water systems. Worsening wildfires are also threatening homes and degrading air quality.
Marine heat waves, acidifying oceans and other climate impacts are "significantly altering U.S. marine ecosystems at a pace, magnitude and extent that is unprecedented over millennia," the report says. Knock-on effects include risks to ocean-related industries such as fisheries, tourism, recreation, transportation and energy, which are expected to become larger and more widespread.
What's more, coastal hazards are increasing, with an expected 11 inches of sea level rise along U.S. coasts over the next 30 years. But how rapidly temperatures climb and the oceans rise will depend to a great degree on the steps the world takes to address the crisis.
Work crews struggled to address beachfront flooding in Seal Beach in May.(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
2. Heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events are hitting California and the Southwest hard
The report details how the changing climate is disrupting life, the economy and ecosystems in California and the Southwest.
"We're seeing increases in extremes, both through drought but also through flooding," said Dave White, lead author of the report's Southwest chapter and director of Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation.
Higher temperatures have intensified drought, shrunk the region's vital mountain snowpack, altered the timing of snowmelt, and reduced river flows. As temperatures continue to climb, scientists project that snowlines will continue to retreat higher in the mountains and low-snow years will happen more often.
Higher temperatures are also unleashing more intense storms and are projected to cause more severe atmospheric river storms.
Read more: Has California addressed the failures that led to the deadly Camp fire five years ago?
Scientists note in the report that the Southwest has, since 2000, experienced a megadrought that research showed to be the driest in 1,200 years, and that rising temperatures have been a major driver. Researchers have estimated that the Colorado River’s average flow is decreasing about 9% with every 1.8 degrees of warming.
Extreme heat, drought and water scarcity are projected to have severe and worsening effects on agriculture in California, reducing crop yields, harming orchards, increasing heat stress for livestock, and shifting zones where crops can be grown — all of which will carry major economic costs.
Already, the report notes, the drought in 2021 cost California agriculture nearly $1.3 billion in estimated losses and more than 8,700 lost jobs.
Unprecedented wildfires have raged in California in recent years, driven in part by the changing climate. Of the nation's 50 largest wildfires in 2020, 22 of those fires burned in California. And the seven largest wildfires recorded in the state have occurred since 2018. The scientists said high-severity wildfires are expected to continue as temperatures rise, putting people and ecosystems at greater risk.
Along the California coast, the ocean is projected to rise up to 1.25 feet by 2050, and between 3 feet and 6.6 feet by 2100. That will threaten many homes, since the state has more people living near sea level (within roughly three feet) than any other state except Louisiana.
As high-tide flooding worsens for communities, scientists say the rising water may also threaten water infrastructure in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Bay Delta, where California draws a large portion of its water supplies.
While climate-related disasters have increasingly hit California, extreme heat has taken an increasing toll on health. According to the report, there were 7,687 reported hospitalizations in the Southwest due to heat and heat-related illnesses between 2016 and 2020, up from 5,517 cases in the previous five years.
"Climate change is compromising human health and reshaping the demographics of the region," White said, adding that developing adaptations to extreme heat "is going to be critical priority over the next several years."
Read more: 113 degrees at work, failing AC at home: Farmworkers can’t escape life-threatening heat
Those who are most vulnerable include low-income and older people, and those who work outdoors.
Hayhoe said she hopes the assessment drives home that climate change is affecting us "no matter who we are and no matter where we live."
"Our future is literally in our hands," she said.
3. U.S. emissions have decreased, while the economy and population have grown
Though global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, annual emissions in the U.S. fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, according to the report. Those gains were largely driven by a 40% drop in emissions from the electricity sector, which has made notable strides away from coal power and toward the use of natural gas and renewable technologies. The transportation sector, not electricity, is now the largest emitter in the country.
"California is a wonderful example of the growth in renewable energy and renewable energy capacity," White said. "We're seeing rapidly falling costs for low carbon energy technologies."
In fact, innovations in the energy field are improving the price of zero- and low-carbon energy technology and helping to increase wind, solar and battery storage. The average cost of an electric vehicle battery, for example, has declined from about $1,000 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to less than $200 today.
Declining U.S. emissions have also occurred against the backdrop of population growth and economic growth, the report says.
But while U.S. emissions have improved in recent years, carbon dioxide can linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years — meaning CO2 emitted long ago continues to contribute to current climate trends. For that same reason, cumulative fossil fuel emissions in the U.S. remain higher than any other country, with U.S. emissions between 1850 and 2021 making up approximately 17% of current global warming, the report found.
The report warns that climate change can contribute to political and social instability, with potential ramifications on defense, diplomacy and national security, and that the crisis is also increasingly affecting global and regional economies, with potential implications for U.S. economic and trade interests.
Farmworkers weed rows of romaine lettuce outside of Holtville in October 2022. Growers in the area rely on water from the Colorado River to irrigate their crops. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
4. Climate change exacerbates inequities
Climate change has exposed many of the inequities and injustices that have long been present in the U.S. That includes systemic discrimination and disinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color that are already burdened by disparities, the report says.
Such effects include a lack of green space, which can worsen heat and air quality, and a lack of adequate flood infrastructure. Both scenarios are familiar in California, where the migrant community of Pajaro saw catastrophic flooding amid winter storms earlier this year. In Los Angeles, low-income communities are consistently hotter than their wealthier counterparts.
In California's Central Valley, the report noted that droughts have disrupted work for farm laborers, who are also suffering worsening health risks because of extreme heat.
"That is very clear in this report — how the impacts exacerbate many of our social inequalities, and how climate solutions must and can be solutions for justice inequities," Hayhoe said.
Other health effects include a wider distribution of infectious and vector-borne illnesses such as Zika, Lyme disease and Valley fever, worsening air quality from smog, smoke and dust, and threats to food and water supplies. Mental and spiritual health stressors are also expected, including anxiety, depression and loss of social support systems.
"While climate change can harm everyone's health, its impacts exacerbate long-standing disparities that result in inequitable health outcomes for historically marginalized people," the report says.
Read more: Heat, drought, floods, bad air: Will California's Central Valley survive climate change?
5. Climate action has increased in every region of the U.S.
The news isn't all bad. Across America, efforts to take action against climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions have improved since the previous report in 2018.
The researchers found a 32% increase in city- and state-level adaptation plans, as well as expanded renewable energy and energy efficiency projects on tribal lands.
Scientists wrote that effective adaptation in California and the Southwest, where the population has rapidly grown to more than 60 million, will require "flexible decision-making" as well as technological innovations.
California has taken far more adaptation actions than any other state, and is among the leading states for mitigation actions, the report found. Among other efforts, the state is leading the nation in the charge toward electric vehicles, vowing to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
"I feel good, as a Californian, about the way California has backed mitigation efforts," said Steven Davis, a professor of Earth System Science at UC Irvine, lead author of the report’s mitigation chapter. "I think we're definitely at the fore — and probably pulling a lot of other states along with us."
Read more: California's mountains are too warm for some trees to survive. Inside these 'zombie forests'
However, adaptation efforts aren't keeping up with the pace of climate change, the report found. Relying on air conditioning to fight heat waves, reducing water consumption to address droughts, or using sandbags to resist coastal erosion are temporary solutions, as opposed to transformative ones.
What is necessary, the report says, are "in-depth changes that shift the fundamental traits of institutions, behaviors, values or technologies."
The findings emphasize that just as each additional increment of warming can create more damage, each increment of warming prevented reduces the harmful effects and the risks.
"The National Climate Assessment provides us both the topography of the risk as it cascades through our economy — touching every sector, every segment of the economy — as well as the atlas of opportunity," White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi told reporters.
Dust blows through a forest of scorched trees in the aftermath of the 2022 Sheep fire in San Bernardino County. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
6. Meeting U.S. mitigation targets means reaching net-zero emissions
Scientists say improving the outlook for people and the planet will require, first and foremost, curbing emissions from fossil fuels and other sources to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
Meeting U.S. mitigation targets would unequivocally require reaching net-zero emissions, the report says. That means either reducing carbon emissions to zero or balancing residual emissions by removing them from the atmosphere.
"We actually have technologies in hand that can cost-effectively drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," Davis said. They include renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, electric vehicles and electric heating of buildings. "All of those technologies — which have only gotten supercharged with [President Biden's] Inflation Reduction Act — are ready to go, and can make big dents in the country's greenhouse gas emissions."
When it comes to removing carbon from the atmosphere, nature-based solutions such as increasing forest cover can help, since trees absorb CO2, as can newer advancements and industrial solutions, such as a new facility in Tracy, Calif., that pulls pollution from the air.
Read more: Column: Biden's latest clean energy approvals are good, but not enough
California has set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2045 and has released a blueprint for moving toward that objective. The report notes that Colorado and New Mexico have state goals for reducing greenhouse gases, and that dozens of cities in the Southwest have committed to emissions reductions.
But there is still work to do. While national and international agreements seek to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels, the planet is already coming perilously close to that threshold, with 2023 expected to be Earth's hottest year on record.
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are not falling fast enough to meet national and international goals, and to get there would require declines of more than 6% per year on average. By comparison, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased by less than 1% per year on average between 2005 and 2019.
Davis acknowledged that it's hard to see a path for the planet to meet that 2.7 degree goal, but said there are great indicators of progress on clean energy, and other key efforts.
"I feel optimistic about us being able to drastically cut our emissions and perhaps meet those pledges that we've made as a country," he said.
He also lauded Biden's Inflation Reduction Act as a landmark climate bill. "It's a big deal," he said, "and that, plus the fact that these technologies are now cheap enough that they can compete with the incumbent fossil technologies, is a real source of hope for all of us."
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Effects of climate change worsening in every part of the US, report says
STEPHANIE EBBS, JULIA JACOBO, KELLY LIVINGSTON, DANIEL MANZO and DANIEL PECK
Tue, November 14, 2023 at 2:02 PM MST·5 min read
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Climate change is making it harder to “maintain safe homes and healthy families” in the United States, according to an extensive report compiled by experts across the federal government and released Tuesday.
The report issues a stark warning that extreme events and harmful impacts of climate change that Americans are already experiencing, such as heat waves, wildfires, and extreme rainfall, will worsen as temperatures continue to rise.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment, issued every five years, is a definitive breakdown of the latest in climate science coming from 14 different federal agencies, including NOAA, NASA, the EPA, and the National Science Foundation.
This year's report is more comprehensive than in previous because climate modeling has improved, and the authors took a more holistic look at physical and social impacts of climate change.
MORE: Earth caps off its hottest 12-month period on record, report finds
"We also have a much more comprehensive understanding of how climate change disproportionately affects those who've done the least to cause the problem," Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and co-author of the report, said in a briefing with reporters.
Some communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the report says, warning that Black, Hispanic, and indigenous communities are more likely to face challenges accessing water as droughts become more intense. Climate change also creates more health risks for marginalized communities, according to the report, which says that “systemic racism and discrimination exacerbate” the impacts.
The report lays out how every part of the US is being impacted by climate change and that some areas are facing multiple worsening impacts at the same time. For example, western states saw heat waves and wildfires during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which strained resources and added to the risk of severe illness.
In the same year, back-to-back storms during the record-breaking 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season are some examples of climate-driven compounding events that caused unprecedented demand on federal emergency response resources.
The report detailed some impacts of climate change that are being felt across the U.S., including increased risk of extreme heat and rainfall, among other weather-related events.
Other impacts cited were coastal erosion and threats to coastal communities from flooding; damage to land including wildfires and damage to forests; warming oceans and damage to ecosystems like coral reefs; risks from extreme events like fires; heatwaves and flooding, and increased inequality for minority or low-income communities.
PHOTO: Lake Mead, the country's largest man-made water reservoir, formed by Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States, has risen slowly to 47% capacity as viewed on Aug. 14, 2023 near Boulder City, Nev. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Some areas of the U.S. are also seeing more specific impacts, such as more intense droughts in the Southwest.
The assessment also notes changes in storm trends as a result of climate change. Heavy snowfall is becoming more common in the Northeast and hurricane trends are changing, with increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity and the intensification of tropical cyclones.
MORE: Increasingly warming planet jeopardizes human health, major report warns
2023 was a record setting year for billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States, officials noted in a White House briefing last week.
PHOTO: Damage cost by state (ABC News)
The report also highlights some areas of success, saying more action has been taken across the board to reduce emissions and address climate change since the last report in 2018.
Greenhouse gas emissions generated by the U.S. have been steadily decreasing since their peak in 2007, even as the energy demand goes up -- mainly due to a vast reduction in the use of coal, according to the report.
MORE: Climate scientists warn Earth systems heading for 'dangerous instability'
Efforts to adapt to and respond to climate change need to be more "transformative," the report found. This includes reducing the use of coal, building more wind turbines and electrifying buildings and making more efforts to protect people from the impacts of climate change.
PHOTO: Scenes from the flooded Foster Farms plant on Racine St. in Corcoran, Calif., on July 18, 2023. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Individuals and government leaders should look at the report as a way to help communities across the country mitigate, adapt and become more resilient to the effects of climate change, White House Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said.
The assessment demonstrates "both a real and profound environmental risk, but also a real and profound economic opportunity," Zaidi said. The administration has also noted that adding clean energy jobs is a top priority.
MORE: Climate change, human activity causing global water cycles to become 'increasingly erratic': World Meteorological Organization
PHOTO: A plane drops fire retardant during the Highland Fire in Aguanga, Calif., on Oct. 31, 2023. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The last time the National Climate Assessment was released, then-President Donald Trump said he did not believe the findings.
The 2018 report found that climate change could lead to massive economic loss, especially by vulnerable communities.
In addition to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, which is U.S.-focused, two global climate reports were also released on Tuesday, analyzing the current state of climate change policy action around the world.
UN Climate Change released a progress report on climate action ahead of the COP28 conference set to kick off in Dubai on November 30th. The report highlights that progress on global climate action is moving too slow to keep up with the effects of global warming.
"The Global Stocktake report released by UN Climate Change this year clearly shows where progress is too slow. But it also lays out the vast array of tools and solutions put forward by countries. Billions of people expect to see their governments pick up this toolbox and put it to work," Simon Stiell, Executive-Secretary of UN Climate Change said.
The 2023 State of Climate Action report was also released on Tuesday, highlighting similar concerns that global climate action is not moving fast enough. "In a year where climate change has been wreaking havoc across the world, it’s clear global efforts to curb emissions are falling short." Louise Jeffery of NewClimate Institute and one of the report’s lead authors said.
Countries’ emissions plans put the world ‘wildly off track’ to contain global heating, UN assessment shows
Laura Paddison, CNN
Tue, November 14, 2023
In the latest clear evidence that the world remains wildly off track when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, the UN has found that even if countries enact all of their current climate pledges, planet-heating pollution in 2030 will still be 9% higher than it was in 2010.
This reveals a stark gap between the course nations are charting and what science says is needed to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world needs to decrease emissions by 45% by the end of this decade compared to 2010 to meet the internationally-agreed ambition of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. An increase of 9% means that target is way off.
Scientists consider 1.5 degrees a key threshold beyond which climate change impacts — including more frequent and more severe heat waves, droughts and storms — will become hard for humans and ecosystems to adapt to.
The findings are from a report published Tuesday by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which every year analyzes individual national plans to slash emissions — called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) — of the 195 countries signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement.
Despite a dramatic increase in dire warnings from climate scientists, emissions are still on the rise. This year’s NDC Synthesis report does, however, offer a tiny glimmer of hope. The findings show that the upward trend in emissions is at least starting to slow, and emissions could peak and start decreasing before the end of the decade.
Projections show that emissions in 2030 will be 2% lower than they were in 2019, and 3% lower than the estimated levels for 2025, according to the report.
That’s largely because some countries have recently boosted the ambition levels of their climate plans, which has translated to a fractional improvement on last year, when the UN found countries were on track to increase emissions by 11% by 2030 compared to 2010 — and the year before that, when the figure was 14%.
But these are all very much “baby steps,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, in a statement.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said the report shows that “the world remains massively off track to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoiding the worst of climate catastrophe.”
“Global ambition stagnated over the past year and national climate plans are strikingly misaligned with the science,” he added in a statement. “As the reality of climate chaos pounds communities around the world — with ever fiercer floods, fires and droughts — the chasm between need and action is more menacing than ever.”
The aftermath of Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico, on October 30, 2023. The hurricane’s intensification — a phenomenon linked to climate change — was among the fastest forecasters had ever seen. - Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters
A second UN report also published Tuesday analyzed countries’ 2050 plans to reach net zero — where they decarbonize their economies as much as possible and remove any remaining planet-heating pollution from the atmosphere.
It found that if all long-term strategies were implemented on time, these countries’ emissions could be roughly 63% lower in 2050 compared to 2019. Although the report noted that many net zero targets remain uncertain and have long deadlines, postponing critical action into the future.
Tuesday’s findings follow the UN’s Global Stocktake report released in September, which also confirmed that governments are not moving fast enough to avoid catastrophic levels of warming. It warned there was “a rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments.”
Stiell said these findings should catalyze bolder action at the UN’s upcoming COP28 climate summit in Dubai. “Every fraction of a degree matters, but we are severely off track,” he said. “COP28 is our time to change that.”
At COP28, countries will complete the global stocktake exercise, where they assess progress on climate action. The process is intended to feed into the next round of more ambitious national climate action plans due to be submitted to the UN in 2025.
No place in the US is safe from the climate crisis, but a new report shows where it’s most severe
Ella Nilsen, CNN
Tue, November 14, 2023
The effects of a rapidly warming climate are being felt in every corner of the US and will worsen over the next 10 years with continued fossil fuel use , according to a stark new report from federal agencies.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report due roughly every five years, warned that even though planet-warming pollution in the US is slowly decreasing, it is not happening nearly fast enough to meet the nation’s targets, nor is it in line with the UN-sanctioned goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a threshold beyond which scientists warn life on Earth will struggle to cope.
This year’s assessment reflects the reality that Americans can increasingly see and feel climate impacts in their own communities, said Katharine Hayhoe, a distinguished climate scientist at Texas Tech University and contributor to the report.
“Climate change is affecting every aspect of our lives,” Hayhoe told CNN.
Some of the report’s sweeping conclusions remain painfully familiar: No part of the US is truly safe from climate disasters; slashing fossil fuel use is critical to limit the consequences, but we’re not doing it fast enough; and every fraction of a degree of warming leads to more intense impacts.
But there are some important new additions: Scientists can now say with more confidence when the climate crisis has made rainstorms, hurricanes and wildfires stronger or more frequent, long-term drought more severe and heat more deadly.
The remains of a vehicle in a burned neighborhood after wildfires in Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii, on August 18. - Bryan Anselm/New Jersey State Council for the Arts Fellowship/Redux
This summer alone, the Phoenix area baked through a record 31 consecutive days above 110 degrees, a shocking heatwave that was partly responsible for more than 500 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County in 2023 – its deadliest year for heat on record.
In July, a torrential rainstorm deluged parts of Vermont in deadly floodwaters. Then in August, Maui was devastated by a fast-moving wildfire and Florida’s Gulf Coast was slammed by its second major hurricane in two years.
President Joe Biden will deliver remarks on Tuesday and is expected to unveil more than $6 billion in funding to strengthen climate resilience “by bolstering America’s electric grid, investing in water infrastructure upgrades, reducing flood risk to communities, and advancing environmental justice for all,” an administration official said.
The US needs “a transformation of the global economy on a size and scale that’s never occurred in human history” to “create a livable future for ourselves and our children,” White House senior climate adviser John Podesta told reporters.
Here are five significant takeaways from the federal government’s sweeping climate report.
It’s easier to pinpoint which disasters were made worse by climate change
The latest report contains an important advancement in what’s called “attribution science” – scientists can more definitively show how climate change is affecting extreme events, like heatwaves, droughts to hurricanes and severe rainstorms.
Climate change doesn’t cause things like hurricanes or wildfires, but it can make them more intense or more frequent.
For instance, warmer oceans and air temperatures mean hurricanes are getting stronger faster and dumping more rainfall when they slam ashore. And hotter and drier conditions from climate change can help vegetation and trees become tinderboxes, turning wildfires into megafires that spin out of control.
“Now thanks to the field of attribution, we can make specific statements,” Hayhoe said, saying attribution can help pinpoint certain areas of a city that are now more likely to flood due to the effects of climate change. “The field of attribution has advanced significantly over the last five years, and that really helps people connect the dots.”
All regions are feeling climate change, but some more severely
There is no place immune from climate change, Biden administration officials and the report’s scientists emphasized, and this summer’s extreme weather was a deadly reminder.
Some states – including California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas – are facing more significant storms and extreme swings in precipitation.
Landlocked states won’t have to adapt to sea level rise, though some – including Appalachian states like Kentucky and West Virginia – have seen devastating flooding from rainstorms.
And states in the north are grappling with an increase in tick-borne diseases, less snow, and stronger rainstorms.
“There is no place that is not at risk, but there are some that are more or less at risk,” Hayhoe told CNN. “That is a factor of both the increasingly frequent and severe weather and climate extremes you’re exposed to, as well as how prepared (cities and states) are.”
Climate change is exacting a massive economic toll
Climate shocks on the economy are happening more frequently, the report said, evidenced by the new record this year for the number of extreme weather disasters costing at least $1 billion. And disaster experts have spent the last year warning the US is only beginning to see the economic fallout of the climate crisis.
Climate risks are hitting the housing market in the form of skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance rates. Some insurers have pulled out of high-risk states altogether.
Stronger storms wiping out certain crops or extreme heat killing livestock can send food prices soaring. And in the Southwest, the report’s researchers found that hotter temperatures in the future could lead to a 25% loss of physical work capacity for agricultural workers from July to September.
The US is cutting planet-warming pollution, but not nearly fast enough
Unlike the world’s other top polluters – China and India – planet-warming pollution in the US is declining. But it’s not happening nearly fast enough to stabilize the planet’s warming or meet the United States’ international climate commitments, the report explains.
The country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, driven in large part by the electricity sector moving away from coal and toward renewable energy and methane gas, the latter of which is still a fossil fuel that has a significant global warming effect.
The decline is good news for the climate crisis, but look at the fine print and the picture is mixed.
The report finds US planet-warming emissions “remain substantial” and would have to sharply decline by 6% annually on average to be in line with the international 1.5-degree goal. To put that cut into perspective, US emissions decreased by less than 1% per year between 2005 and 2019 – a tiny annual drop.
Water – too much and not enough – is a huge problem for the US
One of the report’s biggest takeaways centers on the precarious future of water in the US, and how parts of the country are facing a future with either extreme drought and water insecurity, or more flooding and sea level rise.
Drought and less snowpack are huge threats to Southwest communities in particular. The report’s Southwest chapter, led by Arizona State University climate scientist Dave White, found the region was significantly drier from 1991 to 2020 than the three decades before.
White said that’s an ominous sign as the planet continues to warm, with significant threats to snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains and the Rockies – both of which provide crucial freshwater in the West.
White added that a lack of freshwater in the region also has significant economic and agricultural impacts, as it supports cities, farms, and Native American tribes.
“Mountains are our natural reservoirs in the region,” White told CNN. “Climate impacts on that mountain snowpack have really significant negative effects for the way our infrastructure operates. It’s just critical for us to protect those resources.”
CNN’s Donald Judd contributed to this report.
Nowhere Is Safe From Worsening Climate Change, New US Report Warns
Kendra Pierre-Louis, Eric Roston and Zahra Hirji
Tue, November 14, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- The floods, heat waves, storms and fires fed by global warming are getting worse across the US and will pose increasing danger to Americans unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut sharply and swiftly. The tools to do that are available today and are being adopted by communities nationwide, although not quickly enough to avert the crisis, according to a major government report released Tuesday.
Called the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the report “is the authoritative, definitive assessment of how our country is doing on climate change,” Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said ahead of the release. Not only does it make clear that “climate change is here,” she said, it also highlights how “America’s stepping up to meet this moment.”
The report comes at a time of record-shattering heat. This June, July, August, September and October were all the hottest respective months on record globally, putting 2023 on track to be the hottest year yet. All this heat is playing out in the form of devastating disasters in the US. The nation has already experienced a record-high 25 disasters this year that have generated at least $1 billion in damages each, from deadly wildfires in Maui to flooding in Vermont to Hurricane Idalia pummeling Florida. On average, according to the report, the US now experiences a billion-dollar disaster every three weeks, compared to once every four months (adjusting for inflation) in 1980, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration first started tallying records.
“The impacts of climate change are continuing to change faster than we expected them to,” Kris May, chief executive officer of Pathways Climate Institute in San Francisco and the lead author of two of the report’s chapters, told Bloomberg Green in an interview. “It’s increasing the urgency for both mitigating greenhouse gases and also implementing adaptation efforts to help us adapt, because we’re not slowing down [warming] anytime soon.”
About 2,000 pages long, the latest National Climate Assessment is the most comprehensive study of climate change’s risks to and effects on the US. Roughly 750 people wrote or contributed to this report, a mix of scientists across federal agencies and outside the government as well. This is the fifth edition released since Congress passed the Global Change Act in 1990, establishing the Global Change Research Program. The act requires the program to regularly evaluate current scientific research on climate change and present an assessment of its impacts on the country to Congress and the president. The fourth edition of the report was published in phases in 2017 and 2018.
The new report affirms prior assessments that the planet is warming at an unprecedented pace, human-caused greenhouse gases are the cause and climate impacts are a problem of the present, not just the future.
“Too many people still think of climate change as an issue that’s distant from us in space or time or relevance,” said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University and chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, who helped author this and previous versions of the assessment. “But NCA clearly explains how climate change is affecting us here in the places where we live, both now and in the future, and across every sector of human and natural society.”
Most everywhere in the US is affected by the extra heat trapped in the Earth system. Wildfire smoke is fast becoming a health threat on top of conventional air pollution. Forest owners and managers around the country are girding for a continuous increase in weather conducive to large fires. Sea levels along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts are set to rise 11 inches by 2050 — about the same increase as they experienced over the entire past century.
Every region is changing in ways that present distinct challenges. California withered for more than two decades through its worst drought in more than 1,200 years, though the winter of 2022 to 2023 brought some relief. Fisheries have collapsed in Alaska. Diseases from ticks and mosquitos are on the rise in the Southeast.
In the Midwest, which is responsible for producing nearly a third of the world’s corn and soybeans, higher temperatures and more rapid oscillations between extreme droughts and floods threaten agricultural production and, by extension, the global food supply.
Markets are already absorbing the losses, and both trade and economic growth are directly impacted. This edition of the report is the first to include a chapter dedicated to economics, an exploration of both cumulative and expected future losses from greenhouse gas emissions. American households can expect impacts to property values, employment, income and quality of life.
Compared to past editions, the report places a stronger emphasis on climate justice and climate solutions and will be the first to be entirely translated into Spanish. Climate change is disproportionately harming the health and well-being of historically marginalized populations in the US, including Black and Indigenous communities. That exacerbates other community stressors such as pollution and lack of access to high-quality health care.
At the same time, steps to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of warming are happening around the country. Farmers in Texas and Kansas, for instance, are taking up soil management practices that prioritize carbon storage. The city of Pittsburgh updated its stormwater code last year to take heavier expected rainfall into account.
The report “is designed to provide detailed practical information for everyone,” said Prabhakar. She gave the example of how an urban planner in Texas could consult it to tell “where to locate cooling centers, so that they can create a refuge from the extreme heat that happens now.”
Weeks ahead of the global climate conference COP28 in Dubai, and with President Joe Biden Biden seeking reelection in 2024, White House officials used the report’s release to emphasize the progress the country has made on climate change since he took office in January 2021, including the passage of Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, last year.
“The assessment shows plummeting costs for clean energy technologies, like wind and solar, and skyrocketing deployment,” said John Podesta, White House senior advisor for clean energy innovation. Since Biden took office, the private sector has invested nearly $350 billion in clean energy and green projects have created more than 210,000 jobs, Podesta said.
Speaking about the report Tuesday morning, Biden said, “It lays out the threats and dangers, but most experts would acknowledge that it also shows solutions are within reach.”
Biden criticized “MAGA Republican leaders who still deny climate change,” singling out his predecessor and likely 2024 opponent Donald Trump, whose administration made efforts to impede the preparation of the new report.
“We’re shining a light. We’re sharing this report in detail with the American people so they know exactly what they’re facing and what we’re going to have to do,” Biden said.
The White House on Tuesday also announced the new allocation of more than $6 billion in climate spending, including $3.9 billion for the Department of Energy to modernize the nation’s electric grids and $300 million for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help communities affected by recent flooding.
US emissions have declined since peaking in 2007, even as the country’s population and per capita gross domestic product have risen. But the US remains the world’s second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Absent much deeper cuts by it and other nations, climate risks to people and property will grow. And even with significant cuts, some further warming and damages from it would be unavoidable.
“The takeaway from all of our collective work should not be doom and despair,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s national climate advisor, but “a sense of hope and possibilities.”
--With assistance from Justin Sink
Emissions need to be slashed 43 percent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5C, the IPCC says
Kelly MACNAMARA
Tue, November 14, 2023
(Yuri CORTEZ)
The world is "failing to get a grip" on climate change, the UN warned Tuesday, as an assessment of climate pledges shows only minor progress on reducing emissions this decade.
In a report released just weeks before high-stakes negotiations on limiting global warming, the United Nations climate change organisation said the world was not acting with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
With temperatures soaring and 2023 expected to become the warmest year so far in human history, scientists say the pressure on world leaders to curb planet-heating greenhouse gas pollution has never been more urgent.
The UN found that combined climate plans from nearly 200 nations would put the world on a path for 2030 carbon emissions just two percent below 2019 levels.
That is far short of the 43 percent fall that the UN's IPCC climate panel says is needed to limit warming to the Paris deal target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the preindustrial era.
"Every fraction of a degree matters, but we are severely off track. COP28 is our time to change that," said UN Climate Change chief Simon Stiell.
He called for climate talks in Dubai this month to mark a "clear turning point" for a world already wracked by increasing floods, heatwaves and storms.
Scientists have warned that humanity is dangerously close to blowing past the 1.5C global heating limit, risking intensifying impacts.
"The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, warning countries were not acting fast enough to avoid catastrophe.
"Inch by inch progress will not do. It is time for a climate ambition supernova in every country, city, and sector."
President Joe Biden announced Tuesday billions more dollars in investment to try to make the United States more resilient to global warming, saying "anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future."
"The impacts we're seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious and more costly," he added.
- Closing the gap -
Under the 2015 Paris deal, countries are required to submit ever deeper emission cutting plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs.
The latest annual UN assessment of these plans includes 20 updated NDCs submitted between September 2022 and September 2023, including from Mexico, Turkey, Norway and COP28 hosts the United Arab Emirates.
Last year's report used a 2010 benchmark and found that if the world's NDCs were fully implemented, emissions would be 10.6 percent higher by 2030.
This time around there has been "only a fractional improvement", Stiell said, with emissions projected to be 8.8 percent higher in 2030 than in 2010.
In September, a global stocktake of the world's progress on averting the worst impacts of climate change warned that the world was far off target.
Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 and drop sharply thereafter to keep the 1.5C limit in view, it said, drawing from a major scientific assessment by the UN's IPCC science advisory panel.
Achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 -- another Paris goal -- will also require phasing out the burning of all fossil fuels whose emissions cannot be captured or compensated.
- 'The only chance' -
A response to the stock take will form the centrepiece of the November 30 to December 12 COP28, with crucial debates over the future of oil, gas and coal -- the main drivers of planet-heating emissions.
But countries are still failing to match their actions to what scientists say is needed to avoid blasting past the world's agreed global warming limits.
This month a United Nations Environment Programme report found that planned production increases in major petrostates would result in 460 percent more coal, 82 percent more gas and 29 percent more oil than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C.
And the room to manoeuvre might also be tighter than previously understood.
In October, new research found that the amount of CO2 the world can emit and still have a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5C could be used up in six years.
"We are still miles off where we need to be for limiting global warming to 1.5C," said Tom Evans, policy advisor at the think tank E3G, adding that the response to the stocktake will be "critical".
"It's the only chance we have to make sure that the next set of climate targets -- due by 2025 -- will put us in a place to close this gap."
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