A climate scientist explains recent heat records

This has been a year of record temperatures across the globe. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), June 2024 was the warmest June on record and the 13th consecutive month of record-high temperatures. This follows news from the Copernicus Climate Change Service that we recently experienced a 12-month period in which every month was at least 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial temperatures. That’s significant not just because it felt a little hotter for all of us, but because climate scientists have identified 1.5 degrees Celsius as a critical global warming threshold to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. To be clear, this doesn’t mean the fight against climate change is lost. But the extreme heat impacting billions of people this summer is providing a preview of what might lie ahead if we don’t take aggressive action.

Today’s episode features a conversation with Dr. Stephanie Roe, WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Lead Scientist. Stephanie explains the role that climate change plays in driving heat waves, what key indicators she’s following to determine just how bad heat-related climate impacts have gotten, and what we can all do in our daily lives to address climate change and adapt to extreme heat.

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Chapters:

0:22 Intro

2:24 What does science say about recent heat?

4:53 Is climate change primarily to blame?

6:13 El Nino and La Nina factors

7:21 How much worse could it get?

8:19 Progress on reducing emissions

10:14 Role of carbon dioxide removal

14:27 How can individuals help reduce emissions?

19:36 How can individuals minimize climate impacts?

22:57 Parting thoughts from a climate scientist

26:16 Outro

[markschuette]

here in Oregon the USFS is CLEAR CUTTING millions of acres of public forest due to fear of fires! and the heavy equipment they use is also tearing up the soils! Recovery of those forest won't happen in my life!

[dontuwumyowo]

I cannot imagine being at all hopeful that emissions will peak anytime in the next 2 decades.

[sunspot]

Over 40 years ago the late great Carl Sagan warned us against tipping into a "Runaway Greenhouse". From what I see it looks like we did that beginning last July, and the evidence mounts daily showing that is likely. Maybe it's time to dig Sagan out of the memory hole. When Hansen spoke to Congress in 1988 he was mostly just telling the same story that Sagan told Congress in 1985! It's on Youtube...

[pictureworksdenver]

Jevons' paradox. Increased energy efficiency will result in more energy consumption, not less.

[roberthornack]

The aerosol masking paradox makes abundantly clear that there is no way out of this situation!

[Frosty]

We talk allot about what "we" are emitting, as we should. Here's the problem as I see it. The CO2 that "we" are emitting has warmed the planet enough to start melting permafrost, which acts like a cork on a bottle. Under permafrost is centuries worth of detritus material which when thawed will decay and send those gases into the atmosphere in a reinforcing feedback loop. In other words: "the more ice we melt the faster we melt ice". I hope I am wrong but if this occurs we are in for some very bad times.

[frankstone]

It's time to start building underground housing.

[AlbertPOost]

Hanssen hypothesizes that sulfate cooling effects, and as a result, CO2 heating effects may both be underestimated in IPCC climate models. Since 2010 sulfate output is reduced. A few extra years of accelerated warming are needed to confirm the hypothesis of much stronger warming vulnerability of CO2.

[ecocentrichomestead]

Nothing you can do.... Grow a damn forest garden!!!!

[ranradd]

Good report and appreciate it. However, CO2 removal from the atmosphere (an additional 5-7 billion tons per year) is a joke. People making better food choices, another joke. Politicians changing policy fast enough to make a dent in fossil fuel use, really? When equatorial zones become uninhabitable and billions of people migrate north and south, then, maybe, the population of people will get the idea that radical changes need to happen.

[anabolicamaranth]

Here in the US Midwest we’re hitting a stunningly LOW number of summer record highs. We’re still burning lots of coal and have high SO2 levels. Columbus OH # of 100F+ days from 1931-1955: 31. Number of 100F days from 1956- 1980: Zero. Coal plants started going into service around 1950. India also has high SO2 and per Goddard climate reports it is not warming nearly as fast as planet average. Scaling up renewables will mean much hotter summers in the Midwest. No more aerosol masking and we’ll obliterate records.

[dreaming_butterfly]

If we have time to do something then we do nothing

[Hickalum]

We desperately need to implement NetZero …
If the UK achieved NetZero we could reduce global boiling by 0.0004 degrees C per year.
A … UK emissions per year = 400 million tons (gov.uk)
B … CO2 required to increase global temperature by one degree C = 1 million million tons (IPCC)
Divide A by B to get the reduction in global temperature if UK achieved Net Zero.
Answer; 0.0004 degrees Centigrade per year.
That’s four ten-thousandths of one degree C per year.
California is also 0.0004 … Australia 0.0005 degrees C per year.

[northerncoloradotransparen]

Greed has finally caught up with our species and humanity is going to pay the ultimate price

[pbinsb]

Please stop putting "music" onto the intro track. It might just be a higher decibel than the voice.

[Silks-]

Her carbon removal spiel was purposely vague, and definitely misleading. We have to be honest about our predicament, and all of the factors involved, regardless of one’s agenda.

[blogintonblakley]

The reason we have climate changes is the same reason nothing much will be done to mitigate climate change. The rush for profit and progress has driven climate change. The people who've achieved great success want to continue doing all the things they have gotten used to doing. Which means more profits, more tech progress and more climate change.

[freeheeler]

The climate crisis is an existential threat, but it is just one of many facing us and life on Earth. Our human population is still exploding and our cities are still gobbling up farmland and wildland. Twelve billion people won’t leave any habitat for other species. We are are still overexploiting increasingly scarce ground and surface water. Scarcity and demand are driving up prices for fossil fuel and fertilizer, key inputs for agriculture. And, wildlife populations are rapidly declining and going extinct. We are already using more resources than our planet can sustainably provide to us. As our population rapidly grows from immigration in the US and Europe, and too many births elsewhere, and as the climate veers further from what our agricultural systems can adapt to, mass starvation will increase.

[kizziah]

If they were worried about the heat, they would quit flying their private jets, stop the cloud seeding, quit cutting down trees, and stop laying black asphalt.

[reverands]

Half the Globe is in winter, people don't realize, when you talk about Global averages.