Climate change: Global impacts 'accelerating' - WMO

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the physical and financial impacts of global warming are accelerating.

Global impacts of climate change are accelerating.

Record greenhouse gas levels are driving temperatures to "increasingly dangerous levels", it says.

Their report comes in the same week as the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported a surge in CO2 in 2018.

However, new data from the UK suggests Britain is bucking the trend with emissions down by 3%.

Read the story from the BBC - “Climate change: Global impacts 'accelerating' - WMO.”

Minerals council still dangerously wrong on coal and climate

After 30 years of inaction, the focus on climate risk is accelerating as the physical impact of climate change worsens and the transition risks to a low-carbon world intensify.

.....still dangerously wrong on climate and coal.

Despite effusive official rhetoric, nothing has been done to seriously address climate change, notwithstanding increasingly urgent warnings.

To prevent temperatures rising above the upper 2⁰C limit of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, it is no longer possible to follow a gradual, incrementalist glide path.

We have left it too late; emergency action, akin to wartime regulation, is inevitable, which further increases the transition risk. Market-based measures alone are insufficient.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Ian Dunlop - “Minerals council still dangerously wrong on coal and climate.”

‘Concerning': Marine heatwaves increasing, especially near Australia

Marine heatwaves are increasing in their frequency and duration at an accelerating rate in many parts of the world, especially around Australia, a team of international scientists has found.

Warm waters may be welcomed by beachgoers but
the impacts beneath the waves are not so good.

The number of oceanic heatwave days a year has increased by 54 per cent in the past century globally, the researchers determined, using data of sea-surface temperatures from long-established sites and satellites.

“We have seen an increasing trend in the frequency and duration [of marine heatwaves], and that trend has accelerated in the past 30 years or so," said Lisa Alexander, associate professor at University of NSW's Climate Change Research Centre, and an author of the paper published in Nature Communications on Wednesday.

Read Peter Hannam’s story from The Age - “‘Concerning': Marine heatwaves increasing, especially near Australia.”

Global sea level rise rate speeding up, 25 years of satellite data confirms

The rate of global sea level rise is accelerating as ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland melt, an analysis of the first 25 years of satellite data confirms.

Satellite data indicates sea levels will rise around 61 cm between now and 2100.

The study, by US scientists, has calculated the rate of global mean sea level rise is not just going up at a steady rate of 3mm a year, but has been increasing by an additional 0.08mm a year, every year since 1993.

If the rate of change continues at this pace, global mean sea levels will rise 61 centimetres between now and 2100, they report today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"That's basically double the amount you would get if you only had 3 mm a year with no acceleration," said the study's lead author Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado.

Read the ABC News story by Genelle Weule - “Global sea level rise rate speeding up, 25 years of satellite data confirms.