This week, the World Meteorological Organization has released the latest State of the Global Climate report. And, like any good report, there’s a key messages section for decision makers and casual readers, titled ‘Highlights’. That’s perfectly good English, but it’s also the wrong word, because in another sense, there are no highlights in the list. There are lowlights, appallings, and diabolicals. Here’s the list:
- Concentrations of the major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4, and N2O, continued to increase despite the temporary reduction in emissions in 2020 related to measures taken in response to COVID-19.
- 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record. The past six years, including 2020, have been the six warmest years on record. Temperatures reached 38.0 °C at Verkhoyansk, Russian Federation on 20 June, the highest recorded temperature anywhere north of the Arctic Circle.
- The trend in sea-level rise is accelerating. In addition, ocean heat storage and acidification are increasing, diminishing the ocean’s capacity to moderate climate change.
- The Arctic minimum sea-ice extent in September 2020 was the second lowest on record. The sea-ice retreat in the Laptev Sea was the earliest observed in the satellite era.
- The Antarctic mass loss trend accelerated around 2005, and currently, Antarctica loses approximately 175 to 225 Gt of ice per year.
- The 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season was exceptionally active. Hurricanes, extreme heatwaves, severe droughts and wildfires led to tens of billions of US dollars in economic losses and many deaths.
- Some 9.8 million displacements, largely due to hydrometeorological hazards and disasters, were recorded during the first half of 2020.
- Disruptions to the agriculture sector by COVID-19 exacerbated weather impacts along the entire food supply chain, elevating levels of food insecurity
Digging further into the report, there are other little shockers. Did you know last year’s ozone hole, which should be a solved problem, was one of the longest-lasting and deepest since monitoring began? That oxygen minimum zones are expanding in the ocean? (There’s a helpful reference to a paper entitled ‘Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems’ in this section, presumably to lift the mood.)
Figure 18 (below) is particularly sobering, as it summarises the impact of some of the climate change risks on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Ecosystem collapse, anybody?
Despite all this, there are things that we should be grateful for. In particular, we should be grateful to the world’s climate scientists and to all who are working to try and do something about climate change. Amongst the depression of the job, the active opposition, the policy arguments, and the din of it all, these folks continue to do their jobs in the hope and belief that we can collectively turn this ship around. We have no choice but to try. Out of respect to our climate scientists, we also need to read and understand this report.