Many Of The Planet’s Vital Signs Have Reached Record Levels Due To Climate Change – CleanTechnica

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Global leaders have promised to reduce their country’s fossil fuel consumption since the 2105 Paris Agreement. Yet, according to a United Nations report issued on Thursday, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming. The planet’s vital signs are weakening, to the point that countries must enact cuts of 42% by 2030 and 57% by 2035 to get on track for 1.5°C. As the UN report states, “The magnitude of the challenge is indisputable.”

Without new measures to start delivering immediate reductions, the world will be on course for a temperature increase of 2.6–3.1°C over the course of this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, planet, and economies. “We are in the midst of a climate emergency,” says the UN, “and the window to act is closing fast.”

Is it technically possible to get on a 1.5°C pathway? Absolutely. Solar, wind, and forests hold the key to “sweeping and fast emissions cuts.” It will take “a whole-of-government approach, measures that maximize socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits, enhanced international collaboration that includes reform of the global financial architecture, strong private sector action, and a minimum six-fold increase in mitigation investment.”

The G20 nations, particularly the largest-emitting members, will need to do some serious self-examination and must commit to assuming the brunt of the reductions.

The future of our planet is at stake.

Current climate policies will result in global warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. This is more than twice the rise agreed by governments who signed up to the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The Paris Agreement, along with subsequent COP (Conference of the Parties) decisions, sets the framework, requirements, and expectations for the next Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs. They are national climate action plans by each country under the Paris Agreement. NDCs, which are to contain targets and measures for 2035, are to be communicated by February 2025.

Crucial Ocean Currents at Risk of “Catastrophic” Collapse

It’s not just the UN that is calling on countries around the world to enact difficult emissions reductions. Other new scientific reports that examine the vital signs of the Earth have highlighted the desperate situation we have created and the absolute necessity to stop the planetary decline.

A group of 44 climate scientists from 15 different countries warn there is a “serious risk” that soaring global temperatures will trigger the “catastrophic” collapse of a crucial system of ocean currents — and possibly sooner than established estimates considered likely. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, moves warm water up from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where it sinks and cools before returning south.

It is, as letter signatory and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf told The Guardian, “one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems.” If it collapsed, it could lower temperatures in some parts of Europe by up to 30°C.

New understandings of a possible major ocean circulation change in the Atlantic is the result of a string of scientific studies in the past few years. Data suggest that this risk has so far been greatly underestimated. Such an ocean circulation change would have devastating and irreversible impacts especially for Nordic countries but also for other parts of the world.

“If Britain and Ireland become like northern Norway, (that) has tremendous consequences. Our finding is that this is not a low probability,” Peter Ditlevsen, a University of Copenhagen professor who signed the letter, explained to Reuters. “This is not something you easily adapt to.”

Globally, the scientists said, the end of AMOC could cause the ocean to absorb less carbon dioxide, thereby increasing its presence in the atmosphere. It could also further feed sea level rise along the US Atlantic coast and alter tropical rainfall patterns.

State of the Climate Risk Report

Another recent publication points to the growing number of the planet’s “vital signs” that have reached record levels due to climate change and other environmental threats. The fifth annual State of the Climate report is an effort to present a clear warning of what the researchers say is a crisis given the extremes measured across key climate indicators — from greenhouse gas levels to tree cover loss.

The researchers assessed 35 planetary vital signs, including the amount of heat in the oceans and the thickness of glaciers. The vital signs also include measures of the human factors driving many of those changes, such as meat production per capita and subsidies for fossil fuels.

Of those 35 metrics, the report finds 25 of them have reached record levels this year, most of them breaking records set in 2023. The human population rose to 8.12 billion people earlier this year, while the ruminant livestock population — a major source of methane — reached 4.22 billion animals. Greenhouse gas emissions this year have surpassed the equivalent of 40.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, driving atmospheric levels of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide — a powerful greenhouse gas emitted from soil — to new highs.

Five of the indicators set records in 2024 but did not reach significant status the previous year — including record consumption of coal and oil. The Antarctic ice sheet lost more mass than at any point over the past 22 years of records. A record 11.9 million hectares of forest burned. And global average temperatures rose further above average than at any point in at least the past 145 years.

“The climate crisis isn’t a distant threat, it’s a here-and-now crisis,” says Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania, one of several well-known co-authors of the report, which also includes historian Naomi Oreskes, Earth scientist Tim Lenton, and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf.

The impacts of climate change have also reached record levels. There is more heat in the oceans and seawater is more acidic, while sea level continues to rise. Record amounts of mass were lost from Greenland’s ice sheet. Heat-related mortality in the US has also increased. It now stands at 0.62 per 100,000 person-years, a more than 30% rise over 2023.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” the authors stated. “This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.”

If you’re thinking that academics rarely invest dire predictions into their white papers, you’re generally right. These authors, however, have pledged alongside colleagues to commit themselves to raising public awareness of the tremendous threat that climate change brings. More than 15,000 researchers have signed a pledge that states scientists have a moral obligation to warn people of the dangers of climate change.

According to the new report, “With the increasingly undeniable effects of climate change, a dire assessment is an honest assessment.”