COP29: What Is the Latest Science on Climate Change?

This year's UN climate summit - COP29 - is being held during yet another record-breaking year of higher global temperatures, adding pressure to negotiations aimed at curbing climate change.

The last global scientific consensus on climate change was released in 2021 through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however scientists say that evidence shows global warming and its impacts are unfolding faster than expected.

Here is some of the latest climate research:

1.5C BREACHED?

The world may already have hit 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 F) of warming above the average pre-industrial temperature - a critical threshold beyond which it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change, scientists say.

A group of researchers made the suggestion in a study released on Monday based on an analysis of 2,000 years of atmospheric gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores that extends the understanding of pre-industrial temperature trends.

Scientists have typically measured today's temperatures against a baseline temperature average for 1850-1900. By that measure, the world is now at nearly 1.3 C (2.4 F) of warming.

But the new data suggests a longer pre-industrial baseline, based on temperature data spanning the year 13 to 1700, the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience said.

Either way, 2024 is certain to be the warmest year on record.

SUPERCHARGED HURRICANES

Not only is ocean warming fueling stronger Atlantic storms, it is also causing them to intensify more rapidly, for example, jumping from a Category 1 to a Category 3 storm in just hours.

Growing evidence shows this is true of other ocean basins.

Hurricane Milton needed only one day in the Gulf of Mexico in October to go from tropical storm to the Gulf's second-most powerful hurricane on record, slamming Florida's west coast.

Warmer air can also hold more moisture, helping storms carry and eventually release more rain. As a result, hurricanes are delivering flooding even in mountain towns like Asheville, North Carolina, inundated in September by Hurricane Helene.

WILDFIRE DEATHS

Global warming is drying waterways and sapping moisture from forests, creating conditions for bigger and hotter wildfires from the US West and Canada to southern Europe and Russia's Far East creating more damaging smoke.

Research published last month in Nature Climate Change calculated that about 13% of deaths associated with toxic wildfire smoke, roughly 12,000 deaths, during the 2010s could be attributed to the climate effect on wildfires.

CORAL BLEACHING

With the world in the throes of a fourth mass coral bleaching event — the largest on record — scientists fear the world's reefs have passed a point of no return.

Scientists will be studying bleached reefs from Australia to Brazil for signs of recovery over the next few years if temperatures fall.

AMAZON ALARM

Brazil's Amazon is in the grips of its worst and most widespread drought since records began in 1950. River levels sank to all-time lows this year, while fires ravaged the rainforest.

This adds concern to scientific findings earlier this year that between 10% and 47% of the Amazon will face combined stresses of heat and drought from climate change, as well as other threats, by 2050.

This could push the Amazon past a tipping point, with the jungle no longer able to produce enough moisture to quench its own trees, at which point the ecosystem could transition to degraded forests or sandy savannas.

Globally, forests appear to be struggling.

A July study found that forests overall last year failed to absorb as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as in the past, due largely to the Amazon drought and wildfires in Canada.

That means a record amount of CO2 entered the atmosphere.

VOLCANIC SURGE

Scientists fear climate change could even boost volcanic eruptions.

In Iceland, volcanoes appear to be responding to rapid glacier retreat. As ice melts, less pressure is exerted on the Earth's crust and mantle.

Volcanologists worry this could destabilize magma reservoirs and appears to be leading to more magma being created, building up pressure underground.

Some 245 volcanoes across the world lie under or near ice and could be at risk.

OCEAN SLOWDOWN

The warming of the Atlantic could hasten the collapse of a key current system, which scientists warn could already be sputtering.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, has helped to keep European winters milder for centuries.

Research in 2018 showed that AMOC has weakened by about 15% since 1950, while research published in February in the journal Science Advances, suggested that it could be closer to a critical slowdown than previously thought.

In the quiet seaside town of Amchit, 45 minutes north of Beirut, public schools are finally in session again, alongside tens of thousands of internally displaced people who have made some of them a makeshift shelter.

As Israeli strikes on Lebanon escalated in September, hundreds of schools in Lebanon were either destroyed or closed due to damage or security concerns, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Of around 1,250 public schools in Lebanon, 505 schools have also been turned into temporary shelters for some of the 840,000 people internally displaced by the conflict, according to the Lebanese education ministry.

Last month, the ministry started a phased reopening, allowing 175,000 students - 38,000 of whom are displaced - to return to a learning environment that is still far from normal, Reuters reported.

At Amchit Secondary Public School, which now has 300 enrolled students and expects more as displaced families keep arriving, the once-familiar spaces have transformed to accommodate new realities.

Two-and-a-half months ago, the school was chosen as a shelter, school director Antoine Abdallah Zakhia said.

Today, laundry hangs from classroom windows, cars fill the playground that was once a bustling area, and hallways that used to echo with laughter now serve as resting areas for families seeking refuge.

Fadia Yahfoufi, a displaced woman living temporarily at the school, expressed gratitude mixed with longing.

"Of course, we wish to go back to our homes. No one feels comfortable except at home," she said.

Zeina Shukr, another displaced mother, voiced her concerns for her children's education.

"This year has been unfair. Some children are studying while others aren't. Either everyone studies, or the school year should be postponed," she said.

- EDUCATION WON'T STOP

OCHA said the phased plan to resume classes will enrol 175,000 students, including 38,000 displaced children, across 350 public schools not used as shelters.

"The educational process is one of the aspects of resistance to the aggression Lebanon is facing," Education Minister Abbas Halabi told Reuters

Halabi said the decision to resume the academic year was difficult as many displaced students and teachers were not psychologically prepared to return to school.

In an adjacent building at Amchit Secondary Public School, teachers and students are adjusting to a compressed three-day week, with seven class periods each day to maximize learning time.

Nour Kozhaya, a 16-year-old Amchit resident, remains optimistic. "Lebanon is at war, but education won't stop. We will continue to pursue our dreams," she said.

Teachers are adapting to the challenging conditions.

"Everyone is mentally exhausted ... after all this war is on all of us," Patrick Sakr, a 38-year-old physics teacher, said.

For Ahmad Ali Hajj Hassan, a displaced 17-year-old from the Bekaa region, the three-day school week presents a challenge, but not a deterrent.

"These are the conditions. We can study despite them," he said.

COP29: What Is the Latest Science on Climate Change?