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Yale Environment 360
Next Year Likely to Surpass 2023 as the Hottest Ever
With climate change and an incipient El Niño driving up temperatures, 2024 is likely to eclipse 2023 as the hottest year ever, meteorologists project. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first 10 months of this year measured 1.40 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial baseline, a product of both human-caused warming and, to a lesser extent, the onset of El Niño, when warm waters pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The previous hottest year, in 2016, also coincided with an El Niño.
A Year of Extreme Weather, as Seen from Space
This year will conclude as the hottest on record, with warming reaching new highs in the final months of 2023. Unprecedented heat helped fuel another year of extreme weather. From the worst wildfire season in Canadian history to the strongest cyclone ever recorded, 2023 saw record weather disasters worldwide. These satellite images, from NASA’s Earth Observatory, show the startling impact of extreme weather in 2023. Click photos to enlarge.
Energy Sector Not Ready for Rapid Rise of Renewables, Analysts Say
The rapid growth of wind, solar, and electric vehicles means that demand for fossil fuels is likely to peak this decade. Is the energy sector ready for the transition?. A survey of clean energy firms by the International Energy Agency (IEA) finds that not enough workers are pursuing the training needed to keep up with the rising number of skilled jobs. There is a great need, in particular, for trained electricians. “The unprecedented acceleration that we have seen in clean energy transitions is creating millions of new job opportunities all over the world — but these are not being filled quickly enough,” IEA chief Fatih Birol said in a statement.
After a Decade of Planning, New York City Is Raising Its Shoreline
On a recent morning in Asser Levy Playground, on Manhattan’s East Side, a group of retirees traded serves on a handball court adjacent to a recently completed 10-foot-high floodwall. Had a sudden storm caused the East River to start overtopping this barrier, a 79-foot-long floodgate would have begun gliding along a track, closing off the playground and keeping the handball players dry. In its small way, this 2.4-acre waterfront park is a major proof of concept for a city at the forefront of flood resilience planning — a city working toward living with, and not against, water.
Canada to End Sales of Gas-Powered Cars by 2035
Canada is reportedly planning to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. Under the rules, to be unveiled Tuesday, electric or hydrogen-powered cars will account for 20 percent of new sales by 2026, 60 percent by 2030, and 100 percent by 2035, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Toronto Star have learned.
After a Record 2023, Coal Headed for Decline, Analysts Say
Global coal demand hit a record high in 2023, but with the renewables buildout continuing apace in China, coal is headed for a decline over the next two years, according to a new analysis. “We have seen declines in global coal demand a few times, but they were brief and...
‘Green Roads’ Are Plowing Ahead, Buffering Drought and Floods
Makueni County, a corner of southern Kenya that’s home to nearly a million people, is a land of extremes. Nine months a year, Makueni is a hardened, sun-scorched place where crops struggle and plumes of orange dust billow from dirt roads. Twice yearly, though, the county is battered by weeks of torrential rain, which drown farm fields and transform roads into impassable morasses. “Water,” says Michael Maluki, a Makueni County engineer, “is the enemy of roads.”
More Than 44,000 Species Now Threatened With Extinction
In its latest accounting, the International Union for Conservation of Nature finds that more than 44,000 species worldwide are threatened with extinction. Of these, nearly 7,000 face an immediate threat from climate change. “Species around the world are under huge pressure,” Craig Hilton-Taylor, of IUCN, said in a statement. “So...
Deep in the Wilderness, the World’s Largest Beaver Dam Endures
Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada, covers an area the size of Switzerland and stretches from Northern Alberta into the Northwest Territories. Only one road enters it from Alberta, and one from the NWT. If not for people observing it from airplanes and helicopters, and satellites photographing it, little would be known about big parts of it. The park is a variety of landscapes — boreal swamps, fens, bogs, black spruce forests, salt flats, gypsum karst, permafrost islands, and prairies that extend the continent’s central plains to their northern limit. The wood buffalo in the park’s name are bison related to the Great Plains bison. In this remoteness, the buffalo descend from the original population, and the wolves that prey on them are also the wild originals. Millions of birds summer and breed here. The park holds one of the last remaining breeding grounds of the whooping crane.
To Fight Plastic Waste, an Indonesian Campaign Aims High
For the industries that make and use disposable plastic packaging, developing countries are huge growth markets. But nations such as Indonesia are struggling to cope with the vast tide of waste this business strategy leaves behind. Tiza Mafira, cofounder of Plasticdiet Indonesia, says the volume of throwaway plastic that’s deluging...
Another Record-Hot Month Puts 2023 on Track to Be Hottest Year Ever
November was the sixth month in a row of record-warm weather, according to a new analysis that finds 2023 will almost inevitably end as the hottest year ever recorded. Last month measured on average 1.75 degrees C (3.15 degrees F) warmer than the preindustrial era, according to an analysis from the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service. And two days last month were more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) warmer, marking the first time daily warming breached the 2-degree threshold, scientists said. The hottest November on record comes on the heels of the hottest October, September, August, July, and June.
How Mounting Rubber Demand Is Driving Loss of Tropical Forests
The elephants are gone. The trees are logged out. The Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary in central Cambodia is largely destroyed, after being handed over by the government to a politically well-connected local plantation company to grow rubber. In West Africa, the Luxembourg-based plantations giant Socfin has been accused in recent...
Why We Won’t Know When We’ve Passed the 1.5-Degree Threshold
While the Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, experts won’t know when we have surpassed this threshold, a fact that could undermine global efforts to tackle climate change, scientists say. Temperatures are creeping upwards, but they are doing so unevenly. Not every year is hotter...
Conservationists Sue to Stop the Planting of Giant Sequoias
The National Park Service is working to replant several groves of giant sequoias devastated by recent wildfires. But some conservationists say planting is unneeded and could damage forests. Severe wildfires in 2020 and 2021 killed as many as 19 percent of all giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world,...
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Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues.
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