༒Discernible shifts in global weather patterns and several other attributes of the planet's environment have now become evident more than ever.
༺From the melting Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers, raging wildfires, elevated sea levels, and long-lasting droughts to uncontrolled rainfall leading to catastrophic deluges and warmer tropical storms, nature's wrath continues to intensify through the consequences of human-made climate change that we are still hesitant to acknowledge unanimously.
♎According to the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Service, the UK's Meteorology Office, and Japan's weather agency, in 2024, the global average temperature rise breached the 1.5°C (2.7°F) threshold above pre-industrial levels, a critical limit set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, making 2024 the hottest year till date.
'Climate Emergency': Oxford's 'Word Of The Year' in 2019
Taking cognisance of the soaring pace of catastrophic climate changes, Oxford Dictionaries back in 2019 pronounced ‘Climate Emergency’ as the 'Word of the Year'.
According to the definition enunciated by the Oxford Dictionaries, 'climate emergency' can be recognised as "a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it."
🏅This announcement came after a year of persistent deterioration of the climate across the globe which entrenched the need to spread awareness and concern across the globe.
꧋According to Oxford’s data, this declaration resulted in a hundredfold increased application of the word. The worldwide protests including the massive participation of the youth and the impact of the desperate civil disobedience acted as the major impetus behind this.
Hydroclimate Whiplash, Feedback Loop: Raging wildfires in California
🃏In the past few days, many in the Los Angeles neighborhoods watched their homes burn on television as raging wildfires killed many and burned thousands of homes, buildings, and structures making it one of the worst in the history of the US state.
🅷It is widely believed by experts that frequent swings between dry and wet weather conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of extremely dry and flammable vegetation. Decades of drought in California were followed by incessant torrential rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023 before it once again switched to very dry conditions in 2024.
🌸In science, such rapid swings between two extreme weather conditions is known as 'Hydroclimate Whiplash'. According to scientists, climate change has led to an increase in these 'whiplash' conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.
💝According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change gradually is making the weather conditions convenient for wildfires to spread more.
🦋The frequent wildfires also leave the researchers worried about a scary feedback loop, in which the vast carbon emissions released by the fires will lead to more global heating, which in turn will cause more fires.
🌺The feedback loop, in scientific terms, is delineated as either a ‘vicious’ or a ‘virtuous’ cycle depending upon its contribution to controlling the earth’s temperature. A positive feedback loop is the vicious one that accelerates the process of global warming, whereas, a negative feedback loop is the virtuous one that decelerates the warming process.
Storm Boris: Devastating flood in Central Europe
🌜Back in September, the entire Central Europe battled the grim consequences of a devastating deluge including multiple deaths and several injuries, all triggered by unprecedented rainfall, new research findings suggest that the elevation in global temperature primarily caused by anthropogenic reasons has doubled the possibility of extreme levels of rain in September.
ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚIn Central Europe, Storm Boris unleashed an unprecedented amount of rainfall for four consecutive days upon Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
🐽The reason behind such record-breaking rainfall was the weather system getting 'stuck' or 'stalled' which triggered the dumping of huge amounts of water. Research says that the effects of climate change on the jet stream, which is defined as a band of fast-flowing winds high up in the atmosphere, is likely to cause the 'stalling' phenomenon.
🅰According to a BBC report, Richard Allan, professor in climate science at the University of Reading, said, “These weather patterns occurred in a warmer climate because of our greenhouse gas emissions, [so] the intensity and volume of rainfall was larger than it would have otherwise been.”
Green Sahara: An unusual shift in Africa's weather pattern
In 2024, Africa's mighty Sahara Desert underwent an unprecedented transition owing to an unusual rainfall influx. The satellite images released by NASA ꦯdepicted a very noticeable increase in green colour, suggesting unusually increased vegetation, creeping into parts of the desert which geographically represents one of the driest parts of the world.
𒁃From plant life growing in the arid region to catastrophic flooding in several other places in the continent- Africa's weather landscape is facing a major change following an unusual shift of a storm zone. Scientists also hold global warming due to fossil fuel pollution highly accountable for the changes.
🧸In accordance with Africa's typical weather pattern, rainfall north of the equator generally increases from July through September as the West African Monsoon sets in. An increase in stormy weather in general marks the onset of monsoon in Africa.
ꦍThe focus for this stormy weather, known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ), keeps shifting between north and south of the equator accordingly during the summer months in both hemispheres.
🧸However, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC), in an extremely unusual move, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ) since at least mid-July has moved north further than it actually should.
𒁃This unusual shift of the zone caused excessive storms and rainfalls in the southern Sahara across Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Libya and made the arid region twice to six times wetter than it should be.
♈According to a report by CNN, Karsten Haustein, a climate researcher at Leipzig University in Germany cited two potential reasons for this strange shift towards the north.
ꦅWhile the first reason took into account the transition from El Niño to La Niña weather pattern, the other reason inevitably was global warming.
💖“The Intertropical Convergence Zone, which is the reason for (Africa’s) greening, moves farther north the warmer the world gets,” Haustein explained.
🌠"As the world warms, it will be able to hold more moisture. This could lead to wetter overall monsoons and more devastating flooding like this season", Haustien explained, as per CNN.
Erratic rainfall and floods in Africa
𓃲Besides turning the Sahara green, the impact of the shift in African weather pattern has also disrupted the Atlantic hurricane season. Consequently, the countries that should be getting more rainfall are getting less as storms shift north.
🌌This year, Nigeria and Cameroon, which typically receive rainfall of at least 20 to 30 inches between July and September, have only received between 50 and 80 percent of the usual amount, as per reports while the drier areas including Niger, Chad, Sudan, Libya and southern Egypt were inundated with over 400 percent of their typical rainfall since mid-July, said CPC.
Floods, heatwaves: Asia bears brunt of climate change
🔯From unbearable heatwaves to catastrophic floods- several Asian nations have been bearing the brunt of global boiling. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Asia has been warming faster than the global average. As per the UN agency's report, Asia, in recent years, has witnessed a temperature rise averaging nearly two degrees Celsius above the 1961 average.
💫WMO also identified floods and storms as the primary reasons for causalities and economic damage in 2023 as several countries such as Pakistan, China, Russia, India and most recently Dubai experienced flash floods, which caused damage to buildings and infrastructure and claimed several lives.
Frequent shifts in El Nino-La Nina weather patterns
🙈In climate science, a shift between El Nino and La Nina, the opposite extremes in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)cycle, often amplifies the unpredictability of weather patterns.
🍰El Niño, in simple words, is defined as a weather pattern involving abnormal warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean leading to extreme heat in many parts of the world and the ocean.
ꩲLa Niña, on the other hand, demonstrates the opposite effect of El Niño. During La Niña events, trade winds are even stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia. Off the west coast of the Americas, upwelling increases, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These cold waters in the Pacific push the jet stream northward.
Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' melting rapidly
🀅Adding to the concerns over irreversible impacts of climate change, scientists have found the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is melting at an unprecedented rate which is an indicator of the catastrophic effects of global sea level rise in the not-so-far future.
♎This time, the group of scientists who formed the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), studied Thwaites using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots to get further details on the glacial retreat.
꧙Coming up with the clearest picture of the transitioning glacier, scientists in the latest report said the situation is "grim", as they found the glacial retreat has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years and rapid ice loss is expected to speed up this century. Furthermore, the scientists also predicted that the Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within 200 years, which would have devastating consequences.
෴Research so far also suggests that the Thwaites ice shelves collapse will leave several other towering cliffs of ice exposed to the ocean making them even more unstable. These tall cliffs could easily become unstable and more susceptible to tumbling into the ocean, exposing yet taller cliffs behind them.
UNEP, policymaking, climate finance: What is the solution?
🐽From implementing suitable leadership and policymaking at the government level to advocating climate finance and conducting awareness campaigns- combating climate change requires multi-pronged initiatives.
൩The climate crisis plays an unfair game. The impacts of climate change vary widely from one nation to the other. It disproportionately hits the poor. Despite contributing to carbon emissions, the lowest-income nations face the harshest consequences.
𒉰Slow fossil fuel transition, inadequate climate finance, and a lack of ambition in national goals appear to be the most significant challenges in the battle with climate change
ܫHowever, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) supports the affected nations in addressing climate change. UNEP primarily focuses on four parameters including adaptation and building resilience to climate change, mitigation and moving towards low carbon societies, reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and finance for new models for the green economy.
🎃The latest 29th edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan focused on a 300 billion USD climate finance target for the developing nations by 2035. These funds will primarily aid vulnerable nations to implement renewable energy, adapt to climate change, and cope with loss and damage caused by climate disasters.
ಌHowever, this monetary figure left the global south extremely dissatisfied as it falls significantly short of the annual requirement of 400–900 billion USD which is crucial for many developing nations to address their growing needs.
