The planet’s cooling system is broken. The June–August 2023 global surface temperature was 2.07☏ (1.15☌) above the 20th-century average of 60.1☏ (15.6☌). The polar regions are known as Earth’s refrigerator and they regulate climate, weather patterns, and maritime food supplies. This does not bode well for Homo sapiens since the cryosphere plays a vital role in the climate system. Emperor penguins have largely been sheltered from the ravages of man, except for human-induced climate change. If this “missing” sea ice were a country, it would be the tenth largest in the world. The recent discovery that emperor penguin colonies experienced unprecedented breeding failure in Antarctica due to total sea ice loss in 2022 supports predictions that over 90% of emperor penguin colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of the century. What happens in the Antarctic does not stay in the Antarctic. A record low minimum extent of Antarctic sea ice this summer has left an area of open ocean bigger than Greenland. 25% of the city is estimated to be destroyed after two dams collapsed due to extreme rainfall. Libya just experienced the deadliest flood of the 21st Century, with 7,000 confirmed dead and up to 20,000 more feared dead in the eastern city of Derna. Increased sea surface temperatures can lead to more frequent and intense heatwaves by altering atmospheric circulation patterns in ways that enhance drought conditions. Warming oceans provide more moisture to evaporate into the atmosphere and fuel more powerful atmospheric rivers.
Warming oceans also play a crucial role in shaping land weather patterns. Warming oceans are having many harmful effects such as decimating fisheries, altering marine life migration patterns, robbing phytoplankton and zooplankton as well as the rest of the oceanic ecosystem of a key food supply by preventing nutrient-rich deep ocean water upwelling from occurring, and increasing the frequency and intensity of harmful algal blooms. This year, the oceans have hit their hottest ever recorded temperature. What happens in the oceans does not stay in the oceans. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter climate researcher, believes the extraordinary events we are seeing today could be an early warning of tipping towards a new and more inhospitable climate system. Multiple extremes of varying kinds happening at the same time are clear warnings of climate tipping points. But it’s much more likely to amplify a sufficiently large shock into a system-wide crisis.Įxperts call it ‘flickering’ when a complex system starts to briefly sample a new regime before tipping into it. …that is potentially my biggest fear going forward: I think our homogenized, interconnected world is very good at buffering against small shocks. Doom’, a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and a visiting faculty fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies: ~ Prof Tim GarrettĪnd so it is that modern civilization appears on the surface to be very robust at sustaining itself, but not when the shocks are coming at us more frequently and with growing intensity. By being squeezed at both ends, a point will arrive at which civilization tips towards collapse. We never know when it will strike, where, or even how, just that eventually it will come for us too…At some point this roving beast will pounce often enough that civilization will lose its capacity to repair climate damages even as they accelerate. I feel like we expected climate change to be this gradual thing we’d be challenged to adjust to. Physicist Time Garrett likens these extreme weather events to a roving beast that makes no place safe and will eventually bring down civilization: In 2023, the world has witnessed the highest ocean surface temperature, lowest Antarctic sea ice extent ever recorded, and hottest summer.
And if it does affect the economy, we’ll find a way to extract a profit from it….ĭriven mostly by rising global temperatures from the continued burning of fossil fuels, extreme weather events such as typhoons, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves and drought are becoming more frequent, increasing 83% worldwide in the past 20 years (as of 2020), and the costs have increased by 800% over that same period.
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