Satellite data shows up climate forecasts

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2023 was the hottest year ever recorded — but 2024 is on track to beat it.

What's happening?

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), July 2024 was the hottest July on record.

July isn't the only month breaking records. Every month in the past 14 months has beaten its previous monthly temperature record for average global surface temperature, according to the NOAA.

"The streak started in June 2023 and now exceeds the record streak set over 2015 and 2016," the Guardian quoted Karin Gleason, monitoring section chief at the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Per the report, the NOAA said that there is a 77% chance that 2024 will beat out 2023 for the new hottest year on record.

"What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records," said Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, per the Guardian. "We are now in truly uncharted territory, and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years."

Why is global heating so concerning?

The reality is clear: This unnaturally accelerated rise in temperature is due to the burning of dirty energy sources.
Watch now: Expert breaks down one issue that causes marketers to 'lose their instinct'

Additionally, the Guardian explained, climate scientists are now emphasizing that "efforts to keep the world to within a 1.5C [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] temperature rise beyond pre-industrial times are insufficient." This means that the pollution goals and plans that have been established by many countries have not been addressed with sufficient progress or are not strict enough to prevent the impact of these temperatures.

It's not good news. According to the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) calculated that global heating is responsible for at least 150,000 deaths per year, a number that is expected to double by 2030 and a "dire" threat to health.

The changes in climate also cause ripple effects, including severe weather events, a loss of biodiversity, the emergence of disease, the destruction of ecosystems, and more.

One geosciences professor is warning that, if planetary overheating continues at its current rate, the melting of the Antarctic glaciers alone could raise sea levels in North America by 10 feet by 2150.
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"It's happening so rapidly that we can see these large effects even in a human lifetime," Aster said. "And that is something that the Earth has not seen before, as far as we know. So that's the most stunning thing to me."

Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

Since 2018, a team of scientists forming the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, has been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, provide the clearest picture yet of this complex, ever-changing glacier. The outlook is “grim,” the scientists said in a report published Thursday, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

They found rapid ice loss is set to speed up this century. Thwaites’ retreat has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years, said Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey and part of the ITGC team. “Our findings indicate it is set to retreat further and faster,” he said.

The scientists project Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within 200 years, which would have devastating consequences.

Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.

A warming world combined with deforestation has made for a dire drought situation in Brazil. Latin America's largest country is enduring its most intense and widespread drought in history.

What's happening?

Brazil's worst drought on record has helped fuel wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. The Pantanal, a region that encompasses the world's largest tropical wetland area, in August experienced a 3,901% increase in its fires compared to August 2023, Greenpeace noted, based on reporting by the country's National Institute for Space Research.

Smoke from wildfires made Sāo Paulo, one of the world's most populous cities with over 11 million residents and a metro area of 21 million, one of the top 10 most polluted major cities in the world in early September. According to Igarapé Institute authorities, over 50,000 wildfires were active in early September, per ABC News.

One of the factors behind Brazil's crisis is an overheating planet that just had its 15th straight month of record-breaking global temperatures. Deforestation in the Cerrado region, an expansive tropical and subtropical biome that covers over 20% of the country, is making matters worse. Trees help hold moisture in forest soil. A study published in Nature showed a direct link between deforestation and droughts.

My opinion has not changed. I expect weather to get more erratic, climate change to get stranger, and then things will get even worse.

People can start making practical long term decisions to not purchase coastal property (at least on the beach).

Pepe started this thread to persuade us that climate change is a "scam".

I think Pepe opened a discussion and I think he offered grounds for discussion.

The issues I suspect need to be considered are:
- What can we do to adapt to climate change?
- How much time do we have to adapt?

- Some mitigation to long-term climate change results,

- Keeping some small refugee portion of humanity alive after climate change.