climate change

A study published in Nature Geoscience shows how climate change is interfering with processes affecting atmospheric circulation and significantly altering the climate in Spain and Portugal. The anomalous expansion of the Azores anticyclone is drying out the Iberian Peninsula and making it increasingly resemble North Africa.

British researchers have analysed the extent to which various types of extreme weather events are attributable to climate change. In the case of heatwaves, they find an unequivocal link. They estimate that the 35 worldwide between 2000 and 2020 have caused at least 157,000 deaths and warn that it is very likely that the impact of this phenomenon is being underestimated.

Climate change will lead to at least 15,000 new cross-species virus transmissions by 2070, as habitat shifts on a 2°C warmer planet will bring previously distant animals closer together. This result, published in Nature, points to increased exposure of humans to pathogens from wild animals.

The latest IPCC report shows that we are not close to limiting the rise in temperatures to 1.5ºC. Fortunately, he points out that climate action in the form of policy and law has increased, and that there is hope to cut emissions by at least half by 2030. In this sense, the retrofitting of existing buildings and the adequate design of new ones will play a fundamental role.

Storm surges, one-off events associated with storms that can cause flooding, are rare and highly destructive phenomena. A paper published this week in Nature finds that they have increased since 1960, comparable to the increase in average sea level rise over the same period.

The authors, led by Spaniard Francisco Calafat of the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool, UK, statistically analyse observations of extreme tides from 79 tide gauges on European coasts over the period 1960-2018, and compare them with climate models.

Their results point to an increase in extreme sea levels in the future, something the authors say has implications for coastal planning. So far, the most widely accepted hypothesis is that the frequency of such extreme storm surges would not increase.

The current climate crisis is not only leaving us with a historically warm winter and a decade of record temperatures, but is overlapping with an almost unprecedented energy crisis. Securing energy supplies in a sustainable way is now a challenge where the war in Ukraine adds to the complexity.

The weekend saw record temperatures in both the Arctic and Antarctica, up to 40°C above normal for this time of year.

Japan's IBUKI greenhouse gas observation satellites (GOSAT) have just announced the detection of a sharp annual increase in the average atmospheric methane concentration in 2021, the largest since 2011. European (ESA) and US (NASA) space agencies, as well as ground stations, have also detected spikes.