Climate change: Global impacts ‘accelerating’ – WMO

By Paul Homewood

 

This is a classic example of how the climate mafia operates:

 

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

This year’s State of the Climate report from the WMO is the 25th annual record of the climate.

When it first came out in 1993, carbon dioxide levels were at 357 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. These have now risen to 405.5ppm and are expected to increase further.

This is having a significant impact on temperatures, with 2018 the fourth warmest year on record, almost 1C above what they were in the period between 1850-1900.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Hurricane Florence was one of 14 disasters causing over $1bn in damages

The years between 2015 and 2018 were the four warmest on that record, the study says.

"This report makes it very clear that the impacts of climate change are accelerating," said Prof Samantha Hepburn who is director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resource Law at Deakin University in Australia.

"We know that if the current trajectory for greenhouse gas concentrations continues, temperatures may increase by 3 – 5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and we have already reached 1 degree."

While some of these figures were published in a preliminary release of the study from last November, the full version has data on many key climate indicators, that the WMO says break new ground.

One example is ocean heat content. More than 90% of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the seas and according to the WMO, 2018 saw new records set for the amount of ocean heat content found in the upper 700 metres of the seas, and also for the upper 2,000 metres.

Sea levels also continued to increase with global mean sea level rising 3.7mm higher in 2018 than the previous year.

"This report highlights the increase in the rate of sea-level rise, and this is a real concern for those living in low-lying coastal areas, for both developed and developing countries," said Dr Sally Brown, a research fellow at the University of Southampton.

"We know that sea-level rise is a global problem that will not go away, and efforts need to be made to help those who are really vulnerable to adapt to sea-level rise or move to safer areas."

2018 Climate impacts

• According to the report, most of the natural hazards that affected nearly 62 million people in 2018 were associated with extreme weather and climate events.
• Some 35 million people were hit by floods.
• Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael were just two of 14 "billion dollar disasters" in 2018 in the US.
• Super Typhoon Mangkhut affected 2.4 million people in and killed 134, mainly in the Philippines.
• More than 1,600 deaths were linked to heat waves and wildfires in Europe, Japan and US.
• Kerala in India suffered the heaviest rainfall and worst flooding in nearly a century

The head of the WMO say that the signals of warming continue to be seen in events since the turn of the year.

"Extreme weather has continued in the early 2019, most recently with Tropical Cyclone Idai, which caused devastating floods and tragic loss of life in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. It may turn out to be one of the deadliest weather-related disasters to hit the southern hemisphere," said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.

"Idai made landfall over the city of Beira: a rapidly growing, low-lying city on a coastline vulnerable to storm surges and already facing the consequences of sea level rise. Idai’s victims personify why we need the global agenda on sustainable development, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction," said Mr Taalas.

The report has been launched at a news conference in New York attended by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

"There is no longer any time for delay," he wrote in a foreword to the new study.

However earlier this week the International Energy Agency published worrying data, indicating that in 2018 carbon emissions were up 1.7%, as a result of the fastest growth in energy use in the last six years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47723577

The WMO was at the heart of the global warming scam when it began in the 1970s. Every year they publish propaganda reports like this, which the likes of Matt McGrath dutifully report as gospel truth, without any attempt to challenge.

This year the WMO has picked a few weather events and used a thoroughly meaningless sea level rise statistic to pretend that the global impacts of climate change are accelerating.

 

First that claim of a sea level rise of 3.7mm during the year.

Even the people who measure sea levels say that one year’s data is meaningless. For instance, AVISO state:

for scientific and statistics reasons, period under 5 years are not significant

Sea levels fluctuate from year to year for perfectly natural reasons, such as ENSO changes. In addition, the error margins are huge.

Proper oceanographers maintain that sea levels should be measured over decades, and not years. For instance, Bruce Douglas:

It is well established that sea level trends obtained from tide gauge records shorter than about 50-60 years are corrupted by interdecadal sea level variation.

 What we do know is that evidence from tide gauges around the world clearly shows sea levels have been steadily rising since the late 19thC, as the world has recovered from the Little Ice Age:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/jevrejevaetal2013gpchange.pdf 

Furthermore, the IPCC has acknowledged that:

It is very likely that the mean rate of global averaged sea level rise was 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm/yr between 1901 and 2010 and 3.2 [2.8 to 3.6] mm/yr between 1993 and 2010. Tide gauge and satellite altimeter data are consistent regarding the higher rate during the latter period. It is likely that similarly high rates occurred between 1920 and 1950.

 

The WMO then goes on to pick out a couple of hurricanes, deliberately ignoring the fact that hurricane activity last year was pretty average:

http://www.policlimate.com/tropical/

 

As for the floods in Kerala, said to be the worst in nearly a century, one can only ask what caused the ones a century ago!

They even have the nerve to say that Cyclone Idai, which recently hit Mozambique was a signal of warming continue to be seen in events since the turn of the year.

Very strange, since hurricane activity in the SH has been relatively subdued in recent years:

 

http://www.policlimate.com/tropical/

 

 

The WMO report is nothing more than the sort of political propaganda you would expect from the UN agency.