Highest recorded temperatures supercharged extreme weather – with worse to come, EU data shows
Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people”.
The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
01/09/2025 - 22:00
01/09/2025 - 19:09
It’s possible for massive fires to burn in Australian cities. Planning needs to reflect this
As the Los Angeles wildfires rage, we are watching a disaster unfold in real time.
We knew this would happen eventually. We have moved from possible futures to these things now happening. The deferment has ended.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 19:01
Emissions caused by wealthiest 1% so far this year would take someone from poorest 50% three years to create
The world’s richest 1% have already used up their fair share of the global carbon budget for 2025, just 10 days into the year.
In less than a week and a half, the consumption habits of an individual from this monied elite had already caused, on average, 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to analysis by Oxfam GB. It would take someone from the poorest 50% of humanity three years to create the same amount of pollution.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 18:39
With winds scattering embers across swaths of land, the Eaton fire burns down some houses while leaving others unscathed
Tell us: how have the California wildfires affected you?
Ash was falling gently over the Historic Highlands neighborhood of Pasadena, California, on Thursday as residents began to grapple with the toll of the Eaton fire still being fought in the mountains above.
This area was under an evacuation order on Wednesday, and the next day the streets were still littered with fallen branches from Tuesday night’s intense windstorm. The fire broke out early in the evening and spread rapidly amid the powerful gusts, killing at least four people and destroying more than 5,000 structures in the area, which also includes the Altadena and Sierra Madre neighborhoods. As of Thursday afternoon, the blaze had burned 13,690 acres and remained 0% contained.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 18:05
What began as a wildfire in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday has expanded to five fires still burning fiercely on Thursday
LA fires live updates: California wildfires latest news
A fierce wildfire erupted in the affluent western Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, 7 January, and quickly expanded as a major windstorm whipped up flames.
In the next two days, several other blazes ignited until around the wider Los Angeles county, which is home to 9.6 million people. Fires were still burning fiercely on Thursday and a terrified region was braced for more danger and destruction.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 15:35
McNeese State University in Louisiana building a liquefied natural gas center, prompting fears of ‘corporate capture’
One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.
As the US’s LNG boom gained momentum in south-west Louisiana, McNeese State University courted the industry to help launch a new LNG Center of Excellence currently under construction, hired a director doubling as an LNG industry lobbyist, and approached federal regulators to co-locate their own research center at the university, according to emails obtained via public records requests by DeSmog and the Guardian.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 13:33
Panels installed on south quire roof expected to meet a third of church’s electricity needs
“And God said, Let there be light” – and on a witheringly cold winter morning there was light, as the Dean of York carried out a rooftop blessing for the minster’s 184 new solar panels.
The sky was blue and the sun shone when the Very Rev Dominic Barrington led the blessing ceremony as the panels were switched on for the first time. “They were absolutely gleaming,” said one witness.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 12:00
The current fires in Los Angeles are reminders of the costs of forgetting
The fires raging in and around Malibu are huge, and they’re terrible, and they’re also the latest in a series of catastrophic fires in Los Angeles county and the region, the latest consequence of heat and drought and wind that have long created the region’s volatile fire weather.
The climate crisis has made it hotter and drier and made wildfire worse here and across the west and around the world, but this region’s ecology has always been wedded to fire. Homes built in and around natural landscapes – canyons, chaparral coastal hills, forests, mountainsides – with a history of wildfire that are pretty much guaranteed to burn again sooner or later create the personal tragedies and losses and the pressure for fire crews to try to contain the blazes. But suppressing the blazes lets the fuel load build up, meaning that fire will be worse when it comes.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 11:00
With 2024 set to go down as the hottest year on record, we know that what is coming is truly horrifying
The past 12 months have seen our world enter new territory. Last year will go down as the first time that the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial times over a calendar year. We could crash permanently through the 1.5C guardrail within the next five years, and shatter the 2C limit as soon as 2034. This will almost certainly result in the tipping points for collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets being crossed, committing us to the drowning of coastal towns and cities.
In years to come, we will look back at this time and ask the same question that future generations will ask: why didn’t we stop this catastrophe?
Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide
Roger Hallam is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...
01/09/2025 - 10:41
Continue reading...
