COP29: What Is the Latest Science on Climate Change?

A flare burns off excess gas from a gas plant in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, US, November 21, 2019. (Reuters)
A flare burns off excess gas from a gas plant in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, US, November 21, 2019. (Reuters)
TT

COP29: What Is the Latest Science on Climate Change?

A flare burns off excess gas from a gas plant in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, US, November 21, 2019. (Reuters)
A flare burns off excess gas from a gas plant in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, US, November 21, 2019. (Reuters)

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.



Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
TT

Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces legal perils at home and abroad that point to a turbulent future for the Israeli leader and could influence the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, analysts and officials say.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) stunned Israel on Thursday by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month-old Gaza conflict. The bombshell came less than two weeks before Netanyahu is due to testify in a corruption trial that has dogged him for years and could end his political career if he is found guilty. He has denied any wrongdoing. While the domestic bribery trial has polarized public opinion, the prime minister has received widespread support from across the political spectrum following the ICC move, giving him a boost in troubled times.
Netanyahu has denounced the court's decision as antisemitic and denied charges that he and Gallant targeted Gazan civilians and deliberately starved them.
"Israelis get really annoyed if they think the world is against them and rally around their leader, even if he has faced a lot of criticism," said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"So anyone expecting that the ICC ruling will end this government, and what they see as a flawed (war) policy, is going to get the opposite," he added.
A senior diplomat said one initial consequence was that Israel might be less likely to reach a rapid ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon or secure a deal to bring back hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
"This terrible decision has ... badly harmed the chances of a deal in Lebanon and future negotiations on the issue of the hostages," said Ofir Akunis, Israel's consul general in New York.
"Terrible damage has been done because these organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas ... have received backing from the ICC and thus they are likely to make the price higher because they have the support of the ICC," he told Reuters.
While Hamas welcomed the ICC decision, there has been no indication that either it or Hezbollah see this as a chance to put pressure on Israel, which has inflicted huge losses on both groups over the past year, as well as on civilian populations.
IN THE DOCK
The ICC warrants highlight the disconnect between the way the war is viewed here and how it is seen by many abroad, with Israelis focused on their own losses and convinced the nation's army has sought to minimize civilian casualties.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said the ICC move would likely harden resolve and give the war cabinet license to hit Gaza and Lebanon harder still.
"There's a strong strand of Israeli feeling that runs deep, which says 'if we're being condemned for what we are doing, we might just as well go full gas'," he told Reuters.
While Netanyahu has received wide support at home over the ICC action, the same is not true of the domestic graft case, where he is accused of bribery, breach of trust and fraud.
The trial opened in 2020 and Netanyahu is finally scheduled to take the stand next month after the court rejected his latest request to delay testimony on the grounds that he had been too busy overseeing the war to prepare his defense.
He was due to give evidence last year but the date was put back because of the war. His critics have accused him of prolonging the Gaza conflict to delay judgment day and remain in power, which he denies. Always a divisive figure in Israel, public trust in Netanyahu fell sharply in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas assault on southern Israel that caught his government off guard, cost around 1,200 lives.
Israel's subsequent campaign has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all Gaza's population at least once, triggering a humanitarian catastrophe, according to Gaza officials.
The prime minister has refused advice from the state attorney general to set up an independent commission into what went wrong and Israel's subsequent conduct of the war.
He is instead looking to establish an inquiry made up only of politicians, which critics say would not provide the sort of accountability demanded by the ICC.
Popular Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said the failure to order an independent investigation had prodded the ICC into action. "Netanyahu preferred to take the risk of arrest warrants, just as long as he did not have to form such a commission," it wrote on Friday.
ARREST THREAT
The prime minister faces a difficult future living under the shadow of an ICC warrant, joining the ranks of only a few leaders to have suffered similar humiliation, including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
It also means he risks arrest if he travels to any of the court's 124 signatory states, including most of Europe.
One place he can safely visit is the United States, which is not a member of the ICC, and Israeli leaders hope US President-elect Donald Trump will bring pressure to bear by imposing sanctions on ICC officials.
Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for national security advisor, has already promised tough action: "You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January,” he wrote on X on Friday. In the meantime, Israeli officials are talking to their counterparts in Western capitals, urging them to ignore the arrest warrants, as Hungary has already promised to do.
However, the charges are not going to disappear soon, if at all, meaning fellow leaders will be increasingly reluctant to have relations with Netanyahu, said Yuval Shany, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.
"In a very direct sense, there is going to be more isolation for the Israeli state going forward," he told Reuters.