The world has been warming up quickly over the past 100 years, or so. As a result, weather patterns are changing affecting millions of lives globally. The reason behind this is climate change – a long-term shift in the Earth’s average temperatures and weather conditions.
This level of warming and human-induced climate change has fuelled a series of extreme weather events worldwide, making them more likely and intense. The events include January’s severe cold wave, the scorching heat waves in the pre-monsoon season, and the extreme rains and landslides.
Already, there has been the bleaching of coral reefs; the sea ice volume in the Arctic has been reaching new lows. The year 2024 ended up as the world’s hottest on record. It is critical for climate action to go much further, much faster but nations and global climatic organisations have failed miserably to limit carbon emissions. Billed as the “finance Cop”, the 29th UN climate change summit (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, was a collective failure to provide the investment needed to shift the world away from the impacts of climate change.
India experienced 536 heatwave days this summer, the highest in 14 years, with the northwestern region recording its warmest June last month since 1901, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. The country recorded 181 heatwave days in June, the highest after 177 days in 2010, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said at a virtual press conference.
Mohapatra said the monthly average maximum temperature in northwest India settled at 38.02 degrees Celsius, 1.96 degrees Celsius above normal. The average minimum temperature stood at 25.44 degrees Celsius, 1.35 degrees Celsius above normal.
Northwest India recorded a mean temperature of 31.73 degrees Celsius in June, 1.65 degrees Celsius above normal and the highest since 1901. Northeast India recorded a 33 per cent rainfall deficit in June, which Mohapatra attributed to the sluggish advance of monsoon over the northern and eastern parts of the country due to a lack of weather systems.
“Only one low-pressure area developed towards the end of June. Normally, we get three low-pressure systems. The Madden-Julian Oscillation was not favourable and therefore, we could not get enhanced convection and low-pressure systems,” he said.
The absence of active western disturbances, mainly during the June 10 to June 19 period, was also a reason for the longer dry spell and heat waves prevailing over northwest and central India. Mohapatra said only three western disturbances, against a normal of four to five, were observed across north India (June 5-10, June 19-25 and June 26-28).
India recorded more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases and over 360 heat-related deaths in one of its hottest and longest heatwaves. The intense heat overwhelmed the water supply system and power grids, with Delhi grappling with a severe water crisis.
According to the IMD, around 40 per cent of the country recorded double the number of heatwave days than usual during the April-to-June period. In contrast, 20 to 38 heatwave days were recorded in different parts of east, north and central India, including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Gujarat.
The warmest year on record, breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius limit
Climatologists are virtually certain that 2024 will end as Earth’s hottest year on record, according to the European climate change service Copernicus. Not only will it be the hottest year, but the planet will likely reach another critical milestone: the first year Earth has warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which world leaders and scientists hoped to avoid surpassing under the Paris Agreement.
“Contrary to our expectations, globally 2024 is likely going to be even hotter than 2023 was,” said Randall Cerveny, a rapporteur on extreme weather records for the United Nations World Meteorological Organization and professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University. November ended as the second-hottest November ever recorded. With preliminary data from January through November, climatologists can confidently say this year will be hotter overall than last.
All of the 10 hottest years globally have occurred in the last decade, according to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. The year-to-date global average temperature anomaly is 0.73 degrees higher than the 1991-2020 average, the highest degree of variation on record for that period. That number is 0.14 degrees warmer than the same period in 2023.
77% of Earth now drier in last 30 years
Over 77 per cent of Earth’s land experienced a drier climate during the three decades leading up to 2020, compared to the previous 30-year period, according to a report released by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Monday.
During the same period, global drylands expanded by approximately 4.3 million square kilometres an area nearly a third larger than India now covering more than 40 per cent of the Earth’s land.
The report, launched at the 16th conference of the UNCCD in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, warned that if efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions fail, another 3 per cent of the world’s humid areas are projected to transform into drylands by the end of this century.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in drylands has doubled to 2.3 billion over the past three decades. Models suggest that as many as 5 billion could inhabit drylands by 2100 in a worst-case climate change scenario. These billions of people face even greater threats to their lives and livelihoods from climate-related increases in aridification and desertification, the report said. Areas particularly hard-hit by the drying trend include around 96 per cent of Europe, parts of the western US, Brazil, Asia, and central Africa.
South Sudan and Tanzania have the largest percentage of land transitioning to drylands, with China experiencing the largest total area shifting from non-drylands to drylands, the report said.
Blazing chaos grips 2024
The year 2024 saw contrasting wildfire activity across the globe. Droughts and heatwaves, which are becoming more frequent and intense as global temperatures rise, contribute to increased flammability of landscapes and the likelihood of large-scale wildfires in some parts of the world. North and South America were the most affected continents according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) data, going back to 2003.
Bolivia recorded its highest wildfire carbon emissions in CAMS Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) dataset by a huge margin, and Venezuela also saw the highest annual wildfire emissions. In North America, areas of the western United States and Canada were most affected with the first significant fi res starting already in March.
Europe had a relatively average season except for Portugal, some countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The Arctic emissions of 2024 ranked in the Top 5 of the 22-year dataset. CAMS data also reflected an intensification of the bushfire season across northern Australia during October and November, slightly above average for the period in terms of fire radiative power in November, but with the overall emissions relatively within the average of the GFAS dataset.
Irreversible climate catastrophe looms
The Earth has entered a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” with 25 out of 35 planetary vital signs reaching extreme levels, warned a new climate report published in the journal Bioscience. Some of these planetary vital signs include human population growth, ruminant livestock numbers, per capita meat production, global gross domestic product (GDP) and coal and oil consumption.
Human and livestock populations have been rising at alarming rates, increasing by approximately 200,000 and 170,000 per day, respectively, noted the paper, ‘The 2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth’. Fossil fuel consumption has also surged, with coal and oil use increasing by 1.5 per cent in 2023. Although renewable energy witnessed some growth during the year, fossil fuel consumption remains approximately 14 times higher than that of solar and wind energy. Global tree cover loss also escalated, rising from 22.8 mega hectares (Mha) annually in 2022 to 28.3 Mha in 2023, marking the third highest rate on record. Wildfi res alone caused a record loss of 11.9 Mha of tree cover.
Sahara sees first floods in 50 years
The Sahara does experience rain, but usually just a few inches a year and rarely in late summer. Over two days in September, however, intense rain fell in parts of the desert in southeast Morocco, after a low-pressure system pushed across the northwestern Sahara.
Preliminary NASA satellite data showed nearly 8 inches of rain in some parts of the region. Errachidia, a desert city in southeast Morocco, recorded nearly 3 inches of rainfall, most of it across just two days in September. “It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” said Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology.
That’s more than four times the normal rainfall for the whole month of September and equates to more than half a year’s worth for this area. While much of the rain fell on sparsely-populated remote areas, some fell on Morocco’s towns and villages causing deadly flooding, which killed more than 20 dead and damaged farmers’ harvests, forcing the government to allocate emergency relief funds.
33% of Sicily turning into desert
Sicily battled its worst drought on record in August – and climate experts say a third of the Italian island could become desert by 2030. Every month this year has set a new heat record for Sicily and at the same time, there’s been 40 per cent less rainfall.
Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate change at Catania University, told CGTN that 87 per cent of water in the entire region of Sicily has already been lost. “At least one-third of Sicily, the western part, will really look like Tunisia,” he said. “It’s becoming a desert.” Dams are critically low and Sicily’s last source of natural water, Lake Pergusa, has also dried up.
PNN