2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

A chronological listing of news and opinion articles posted on the Skeptical Science  Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 24, 2023 thru Sat, Dec 30, 2023.

Story of the Week

Moments of hope and resilience from the climate frontlines

From newborns saved by clean local power to the welcome return of an iconic lizard, our global reporters take stock of their most powerful moments in climate change of 2023.

The change is happening so rapidly that even the time between major climate reports can be measured in tenths of a degree of warming. Betweenone landmark report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018 and another in 2023, humans warmed the world by about 0.1C.

Taking stock of climate change can be difficult in a year of such rapid transformation as 2023.

How much have we heated the world?

Taking the surface temperature of an entire planet is no easy task.

In any given year, variable natural events cause fluctuations in the temperature – such as El Niño and volcanic eruptions. Scientists use modelling to tune out this natural noise to measure the warming that is caused by human activity.

In 2022, human-induced warming surpassed 1.25C for the first time. The year 2023 was even hotter. If you take an average over a decade – a measure used in the IPCC's sixth assessment report – the figure for human-induced warming between 2013 and 2022 was 1.14C.

"The current level of warming is 1.25C, and it's warming at a quarter of a degree per decade," says Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford in the UK, and a coordinating lead author on the IPCC's 2018 special report on 1.5C warming.

"You don't need a model to know that, if you are that close, we're going to reach 1.5C in around a decade or so at that rate of warming," says Allen.  

These numbers can feel very abstract at times. What's not abstract is the effects of climate change as it laps at the thresholds of low-lying homes, burns buildings in climate-fuelled wildfires and thaws the permafrost beneath the feet of communities in the far north.

Future Planet's team of climate reporters write from across five continents to describe what they witnessed as the world warmed in 2023. 

Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the BBC News website.

Moments of hope and resilience from the climate frontlines by Future Planet Team, BBC News, Dec 30, 2023 

Articles posted on Facebook 

Sunday, Dec 24, 2023

Monday, Dec 25, 2023

Tuesday, Dec 26, 2023

Wednesday, Dec 27, 2023

Thursday, Dec 28, 2023

Friday, Dec 29, 2023

Saturday, Dec 30, 2023

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 30 December, 2023

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