Report card: How is the world doing on climate change?

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss top headlines relating to hurricanes and climate change in the Nov. 8 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00We're covering a couple of interesting climate stories today. First we'll

00:03take a look at the latest climate change report card and then we'll dive into a

00:07gas that in some cases is more potent and impactful than carbon dioxide in the

00:12atmosphere. Our first article though from NPR talks about our climate change

00:16report card as the entire global society and in short, Brett, it needs improvement.

00:20It's not failing but it's probably a D at this point unfortunately. Greenhouse

00:25gases continue to slowly rise unfortunately. We reached a record high

00:28once again global greenhouse gases for 2023 so that's not what we want to see

00:33and if this current trend is left unchecked we're gonna surpass that 1.5

00:39degrees Celsius warming post pre-industrial levels easily. We could see

00:45as high as 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Yeah so I think given

00:48that news and how we're not doing so well it seems like action is needed here

00:52in the short term. I think one of those actions can be transitioning or further

00:55transitioning to renewable energy sources. Yeah we're looking at 60% of the

00:59world's electric power coming from renewables by the year 2030. That's one

01:04goal we're looking at. Again time's running out. One other goal we're looking

01:08at Dan is emissions need to fall by half by the year 2035 so it's only 10 years

01:13from now. Yeah and I think one of those things that is contributing to the

01:17warming ties in well to our second article here. We hear a lot about carbon

01:20dioxide being a significant greenhouse gas but methane in some cases can be

01:25more impactful especially in the short term than carbon dioxide. This second

01:28article here from the Washington Post and Brett that the impact of methane

01:33sometimes gets overlooked but it's very important and the levels of methane have

01:36been rising significantly in the last couple years. Yeah we don't we mostly

01:39hear about carbon dioxide but methane is becoming much very important right now.

01:43Now methane is 90 times more efficient warming atmosphere than carbon dioxide

01:48but as you said it's much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere doesn't last

01:53very long but we're seeing a dramatic increase in methane levels especially

01:58coming out of the Arctic region. Emissions are up 20% over the past 20

02:02years and if this continues we could be looking at 3 degrees Celsius increase

02:06in global temperature by the end of the century. And methane comes from a

02:09variety of sources including belching cows but but it also ranges to from it

02:14comes from landfills, leaking oil on gas platforms, a thawing permafrost. In this

02:19case so it seems like from what the study has found that microbes in

02:22wetlands and other types of marshes are contributing to the significant rise in

02:25methane. Yeah a lot of that's due to warming we're seeing the melting of

02:29permafrost in some of these marshes. A lot of this is being released as we

02:33continue to warm we're going to see more and more of this. Yeah that positive

02:37feedback loop so we talk about a lot in climate science and meteorology not just

02:41related to methane but also the positive feedback for instance of the melting sea

02:48ice and how the water then absorbs more of the warmth and that contributes to

02:52the warming of the climate. So I think in short we have action to do as a society

02:57here to help combat some of these impacts here. You can get more

03:01information about climate and these stories at accuweather.com slash climate

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