Global climate warning as the world gets warmer

The winds of change may be blowing through the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic, but there are other climatic forces at work producing more literal changes to the world we live in.

The news last week that 2016 was the warmest year since records began in the 1880s came as no great surprise as it had been widely predicted by climate experts.

According to data from Nasa and meteorological agencies around the world, global temperatures were about 0.07 degrees Celsius higher compared with those in 2015. This might sound like a piffling amount but with CO2 emissions at record levels and the planet warming even a slight increase can have a profound effect.

Parts of the Arctic have experienced temperatures above freezing this winter when they should be well below zero, while the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia has seen vast swathes of coral killed as a result of warming waters.

Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change and Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, says if last year’s record-breaking temperatures were a one-off it would less concerning. But instead they’re part of a worrying trend.

“One very hot year could be chance, but 2015 and 2014 also broke the record and 16 of the 17 warmest years occurred this century. Temperatures are now 1.2 degrees C above what they were at the time of the industrial revolution. They tell us that man-made climate change is here to stay.”

Prof Forster points out, too, that within these temperature rises are some worrying extremes. “A rise of 1.2 degrees C doesn’t sound like much but remember this is a global average and local changes can be much greater. For example, parts of the Arctic Ocean were 10 degrees C above normal last year, leading to an observed all-time minimum in sea ice.”

He says climate change is already having an impact closer to home and that this is likely to continue. “The most obvious impacts on the UK will be a trend towards milder, wetter and windier winters with more intense storms. We already see this trend in our data.

“For example, storm Desmond that brought flooding to northern England in December 2015 was much stronger than it would have been without climate change. Although we can still expect the odd super-cold winter and some cold snowy days, they will become increasingly rare over the coming decades.”

This, he says, will have far reaching consequences. “Climate change will also affect the fish in our seas. We will see increasing sea-level rises and coastal erosion from storm surges. We will need to learn to live with a changed climate.

“Farming, city living and even cricket will need to adapt. A recent UK government report recognised these threats but also pointed to an existential threat to food security from damaging climate change in other parts of the world.”

The question is how much of this is down to naturally occurring changes and how much has been brought about by rising CO2 emissions?

Scientists say that El Nino, a warm water current that can disrupt the world’s weather, has played a role, albeit a minor one. The latest El Nino event has finished and global temperatures may drop a fraction next year, but scientists say the long term trajectory is still an upward one.

“As far as global temperatures are concerned we can pinpoint man’s contribution quite accurately,” says Prof Forster.

“We are responsible for just over one degree C of the observed warming to date. This is a firm science conclusion based on 200 years of research. We take thousands of measurements of temperatures from around the world every day and record minute changes in greenhouse gases and pollutants.”

Researchers trace pollutants to their sources and combine this with careful analysis to quantify the warming elements and match them with observations.

Grant Bigg, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of Sheffield, agrees that we are having profound influences on our climate. “The number of people who think greenhouse gases are not responsible is really very small and continually decreasing.”

But is there still a problem with public perception on this issue? “I think it’s better now than it was a decade ago when the media did try and give a balanced perspective which actually gave more weight to those who said it wasn’t global warming than the scientific evidence.”

The climate change debate has moved on considerably in recent years with arguably the most significant moment coming at a UN meeting in Paris in December 2015, when 193 countries acknowledged the threat posed by climate change and agreed to take concerted action.

However, there are fears that Donald Trump may try and undo some of the work that has been agreed. The new US President has previously pledged to pull out of the Paris Agreement having claimed global warming is a conspiracy by the Chinese to make American manufacturing non-competitive.

But there is a feeling that even some formerly sceptical world leaders now recognise man’s influence on our climate and that something must be done to limit it. “The world’s largest emitter, China, is already beginning to cut emissions faster than anticipated. Even the new incoming US administration does not deny climate change – they rather question its seriousness or the usefulness of policy measures used to curb it,” says Prof Forster.

“There is still much work that needs doing on the science to quantify regional climate change but our simulations from nearly 30 years ago pretty accurately predicted the last 30 years of global warming.

“Current simulations show us that we will likely get an accelerated warming rate over the next decades, unless the global community rapidly cuts emissions of greenhouse gases to near zero levels.”

The general consensus among climate scientists is that without concerted efforts to mitigate our impact on the environment we face significant global changes to our climate in the years ahead.

Prof Bigg says this would have ramifications for us all. “A lot of the changes would hit areas where there are populations that are already struggling, particularly in the sub-tropics, and they would get even drier than they are now.

“And with population increases, which is a major issue, it increases the potential for mass migration and warfare as the weather gets warmer.”

The bottom line, it would appear, is that inaction or denial are no longer adequate answers.

Figures that must sound the alarm

Data from Nasa and the UK Met Office show that 2016 was the world’s warmest year – the third consecutive year this record has been broken.

According to figures published by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), global temperatures in 2016 rose to 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. And the average temperature is now 0.88C higher than the average for 1961 to 1990.

Data show that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century.

A report published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that climate change causes around 18,000 deaths a day.

The world’s first comprehensive climate treaty, the Paris Agreement, was signed in 2015.