The World Meteorological Organization’s annual “State of the Global Climate” report is out today. It’s packed full of numbers from 2024 that tell an alarming story:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now at their highest point in 800,000 years.
The average global temperature last year was 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The ocean was the hottest it’s ever been in the 65-year observational record, and the ocean is warming more than twice as fast now as it was between 1960 and 2005.
There were 151 “unprecedented” extreme weather events in 2024, causing the highest number of new displacements of humans since 2008.
Sea levels are rising at double the rate seen in 1993.
The world’s glaciers have lost more mass over the past three years than in any other three-year period on record.
“WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate early warning systems. This must change.”
The southern states who voted for Trump and his anti-environment supporters (fossil fuel corporations, financial corporations, and people with funny red hats) are now suffering the effects (deaths, injuries, monetary and displacement) of climate change due to global warming. More tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, infrastructure failures, electrical power disruptions, natural gas disruptions, and travel disruptions.
Hoping that we get the blizzard, but prelim report only shows a couple of inches. But should be able to go to the UP this weekend after it calms down and get some good skiing in.
Last Saturday, I biked on the local railtrail in shorts and t-shirt, 72 degrees. Weather drastically changed overnight, and I xc ski’d Sunday and Monday. The trail on Monday was awesome, like primetime conditions. So hoping the storm hits us harder than weatherman is showing.
I’m at 767 xc ski miles this season, it’s been a good season, even though March has been really weak, weather-wise. Made the most out of all of the opportunities that presented themselves. Sure would like to ski locally in April, fingers crossed.
Or not. Over the last six decades (with warming) the trend for tornadoes, except for the least severe F1 category, is a statistically significant decreasing one.
“Stratifying by flood type, we show a positive response of rainstorm-induced floods to extreme precipitation increases. However, this response is almost entirely offset by concurrent decreases in snow-related floods, leading to an overall unapparent change in total global floods in both historical observations and future climate projections.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01539-7
Not a major surprise. Higher atmospheric temps mean a much higher total water capacity held in the atmosphere without a change in overall relative humidity. So, unless there is a cause for water to precipitate out of the atmosphere, it won’t. We see a lot of precipitation here (MN) but pretty much ALL caused by cooler/drier air from the north/northwest colliding with high-humidity warm air from the Gulf. Just got 7"-9" of snow near Rochester, MN in the last day or so. VERY NARROW band overall. Nothing 50 or so miles north OR northwest and lots of rain fell in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and points east. Snow melts in 1-2 days now–if it lasts that long on the ground.
Human-induced climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation1. Due to the complexity of runoff generation and the streamflow process, the historical impact of human-induced climate change on river flooding remains uncertain. Here, we address the question of whether anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability of the extreme river flood events for the period 1951–2010 based on simulated river discharge derived from large ensemble climate experiments with and without human-induced climate change. The results indicate that human-induced climate change altered the probabilities of 20 of the 52 analyzed flood events. Fourteen of these 20 flood events, which occurred mainly in Asia and South America, were very likely to have been enhanced by human-induced climate change due to an increase in heavy precipitation. Conversely, two flood events in North/South America and two flood events in Asia and two flood events in Europe were suppressed by human-induced climate change, perhaps as a result of lower snowfall. Human-induced climate change has enhanced flooding more prominently in recent years, providing important insights into potential adaptation strategies for river flooding.
The most recent IPCC report (AR6) has a summary chart that indicates when a given climate signal is expected to rise above the noise of variations. This is called time to emergence (Working Group 1, Chapter 12, Table 12.12). One of the categories is “Tropical cyclone”. They show that currently “evidence is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal .” Not only is this the case currently, but also for between now and 2050. This is also the case for between now and 2100 under the extreme scenario (RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5).
Don’t know much about Ryan Maue’s data, but historical comparisons of cyclone intensity is difficult because of changes in the methodology over time and differences in how extensively storms were measured in different global regions. Probably the most consistent measurements are available for North Atlantic storms because of their relevance to the US. This is cyclone power dissipation data for the north Atlantic from the EPA:
Also consistent with most modeling is the increased frequency of extreme rainfall events in the Great Lakes region, which is projected to be the hardest hit with respect to precipitation in the United States according to climate models. https://glisa.umich.edu/resources-tools/climate-impacts/extreme-precipitation/
Latest modeling suggests that a major impact of climate change will be precipitation extremes, in other words the old notion of “100 year events” goes out the window. We will live in increasingly unpredictable weather times.
Why are you choosing a five year window when the WMO is very specific about a 10-year comparison?
The rate of global mean sea-level rise in the past 10 years (2015–2024) was more than twice the rate of sea-level rise in the first decade of the satellite record (1993–2002).
From 1996-2002, sea level rose 21mm. That’s 2.1 mm/year. In the 2015-2024 period the rate was 4.7 mm/year. That is definitely more than doubling.
In addition, the current trend is that the number of tornado days (days with a tornado) is declining but more tornadoes are happening during those days. Tornadoes are occurring in clusters. How tornado season is changing | Vox
This is consistent with climate change increasing weather extremes. Climate change is affecting tornado behavior. In the US it is shifting the high frequency tornado alley to places with higher populations of people and trees. It is also causing tornadoes to occur in bunches with the potential for a lot more devastatation.
