The Green Party MP has said the PM can use the King’s Speech to reverse the damage he’s caused on UK climate and nature policy
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has written to the prime minister Rishi Sunak setting out five pieces of legislation the government ought to introduce to address the climate and nature emergencies, Left Foot Forward can exclusively report. The letter, seen by Left Foot Forward, was sent in advance of the state opening of parliament on November 7, when the government is expected to set out its legislative agenda through a King’s Speech.
In her letter, Lucas wrote: “This year has already been one of climate extremes – September smashed through previous records and was a staggering 1.75 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels, causing profound alarm to both scientists and citizens. We have seen climate impacts, from deadly flooding in Libya, to the Cerberus heatwave in Europe and the devastating wildfires in Maui and, as it stands, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year on record.”
She went on to argue that the government must “take this opportunity to reclaim the UK’s climate leadership and set out a bold legislative agenda that responds to the urgency of the climate and nature emergency”.
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Lucas told Left Foot Forward: “In just 12 short months in the job, Rishi Sunak has set a torch to the UK’s climate agenda – approving new morally obscene fossil fuel projects, ditching vital regulations to improve energy efficiency, and dragging the climate into a dangerous culture war. The King’s Speech is a critical opportunity for the Prime Minister to start reversing this damage and tackling the climate and nature emergencies head-on – our country and our planet can’t wait.”
Scientists protest at UK Parliament 5 September 2023.
“The unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September—following a record summer—have broken records by an extraordinary amount.”
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Thursday that 2023 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded following a string of scorching months, including an unusually warm September that stunned scientists.
Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo toldThe Associated Press that September was “just mindblowing” and that he has “never seen anything like that in any month in our records,” echoing the sentiments of other experts.
The European climate agency said Thursday that last month was the warmest September on record globally and “the most anomalous warm month of any year” in its dataset going back to 1940.
“The month as a whole was around 1.75°C warmer than the September average for 1850-1900, the preindustrial reference period,” the agency noted. “The global temperature for January-September 2023 was 0.52°C higher than average, and 0.05°C higher than the equivalent period in the warmest calendar year (2016).”
Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ deputy director, said in a statement that “the unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September—following a record summer—have broken records by an extraordinary amount.”
“This extreme month has pushed 2023 into the dubious honor of first place—on track to be the warmest year and around 1.4°C above preindustrial average temperatures,” Burgess added. “Two months out from COP28—the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical.”
(Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF)
The new Copernicus data came hours after the release of a United Nations report that called on nations worldwide to end fossil fuel exploration by 2030, warning that countries are not acting with sufficient urgency to rein in planet-heating pollution.
Simon Stiell, the U.N. climate chief, said the report “puts the cards on the table—except this is not a game.”
“We know that we as the global community are not on track towards achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement and that there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future,” said Stiell.
Dozens of people spend time at Silgar beach, on 30 September, 2023, in Sanxenxo, Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain. (Photo: Elena Fernandez/Europa Press via Getty Images)
“We’ve never seen a record smashed by anything close to this margin,” one climate scientist said.
In another sign of the climate crisis, September of 2023—following the hottest summer ever recorded over June, July, and August—also seems to be one for the record books.
A data set out of Japan found that September 2023 was 0.5°C warmer than the previous warmest September on record and around 1.8°C warmer than temperatures in the preindustrial era, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote on Tuesday on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
“This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist—absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” he said.
The first global temperature data is in for the full month of September. This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and was around 1.8C warmer than preindutrial levels. pic.twitter.com/mgg3rcR2xZ
Hausfather was looking at the the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55), which draws on a wide range of weather observations dating back to 1958. The more than half-a-degree jump from the previous September record is the steepest increase between monthly records to date, The Washington Post reported.
“We’ve never seen a record smashed by anything close to this margin,” Hausfather told the Post.
“This September would not have been out of place as a typical July this decade in terms of global temperatures,” he added on X, formerly Twitter.
Similarly, we can look at a heatmap of every day of the year so far, where September stands out like a sore thumb: pic.twitter.com/kdOQwylmdQ
Another data set, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ERA5, also shows September shattering the previous record by around the same margin, according to Hausfather.
“I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years,” Finnish Meteorological Institute researcher Mika Rantanen tweeted of the ERA5 data. “Just by adding the latest data point, the linear warming trend since 1979 increased by 10%.”
ERA5 September 2023 monthly data are out.
I'm still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years.
Just by adding the latest data point, the linear warming trend since 1979 increased by 10%. pic.twitter.com/AnNAbyUQwY
The JRA-55 and ERA5 data sets are more immediately available than the monthly analyses from NOAA and NASA, which take longer to complete, The Washington Post explained. The satellite-based data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville is also showing a record September.
The UAH satellite dataset just came out with a monster warm September, largest anomaly of any month in their record.
I'm expecting to see reanalysis and surface datasets coming out with similarly extreme results over the next two weeks. pic.twitter.com/gMjE6yqDQL
2023 has been a record-breaking year in part because an El Niño weather pattern emerged in June, but the primary driver is atmospheric warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of natural carbon sinks. This year has been much hotter than the previous El Niño years in 2015 and 2016.
On a local and regional level, many countries experienced their hottest Septembers on record, among them Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland, according to The Guardian. France’s September beat the previous record by more than 1°C, and Belgium’s September was even hotter than its July and August for the first time since 1961.
“Belgium has never experienced a month of September this warm,” David Dehenauw of the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute told The Guardian.
On the other side of the world, Japan also had its hottest September at 2.66℃ higher than normal.
JMA confirms that it was the HOTTEST SEPTEMBER on record for Japan. The nation's monthly temp was 2.66℃ higher than normal, significantly surpassing the previous record of 1.51℃ set in 2012.
“We can’t believe just how high temperatures got,” a representative from the Japan Meteorological Agency toldJapan Today. “It became a record-breaking phenomenon after multiple factors overlapped on top of climate change.”
September also saw a number of extreme weather events, from deadly flooding in Libya to record-breaking rainfall in New York. Warmer temperatures are linked to heavy rainfall, as warmer air can hold more moisture. Separate studies also said the climate crisis made both events more extreme.
So far, October looks set to continue the historic weather trend. The central U.S. began the month with record heat, according to The Washington Post. And Spain had its warmest start to October on record, Reuters reported.
Spain just witnessed its hottest October day on record with 38.2°C (101°F) at Montoro.
“The bad news is that we don’t see any sign of global temperatures reverting to what is normal for this time of year,” Hausfather tweeted. “They remain close to to the highest anomalies we saw in the month of September as we go into October.”
NSW, Queensland and Tasmania experienced hottest winters with spring likely to deliver hotter than average temperatures too
Image of a kangaroo.
Australia’s winter of 2023 was the warmest since official records began in 1910, with average daily temperatures 1.53C above the long-term average.
According to data from the Bureau of Meteorology released on Friday, the 2023 winter beat the previous record of 1.46C above the average set in 1996. Every winter since 2012 has been warmer than the 30-year average calculated from 1961 to 1990.
Global heating and weather conditions that delivered sunny days were behind the record, scientists said.
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Dr Andrew King, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, said the winter warmth was “pretty consistent with the trend towards warming that we have already seen and expect to continue as we keep emitting greenhouse gases”.
King said the high-pressure systems that brought the extra warmth were “part of the story”, adding “we would not get the temperatures that we have seen this winter really happening without human-caused climate change”.
