climate change

Even ‘weak’ cyclones are being turned into deadly rainmakers by fast-warming oceans

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Thomas Wyness / Alamy

Ligin Joseph, University of Southampton

The final week of November was devastating for several South Asian countries. Communities in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand were inundated as Cyclones Ditwah and Senyar unleashed days of relentless rain. Millions were affected, more than 1,500 people lost their lives, hundreds are still missing, and damages ran into multiple millions of US dollars. Sri Lanka’s president even described it as the most challenging natural disaster the island has ever seen.

When disasters like this happen, the blame often falls on a failure in early warnings or poor preparedness. This was the case with major floods in Kerala, south India, in 2018, which devastated my hometown.

But this time, the forecasts were largely accurate; the authorities knew the storms were coming, yet the devastation was still immense.

So, if the forecasts were good enough, why were the impacts still so severe?

Weak winds, extreme rain

One emerging explanation is that these storms were not dangerous because of their winds, but because they produced unusually intense rainfall.

Graph of wind speeds
This graph of all cyclonic storms over the north Indian Ocean since 2001 shows Ditwah and Senyar weren’t particularly windy. (Wind speed measured in knots. 1 knot is about 1.15 mph or 1.85 kph) Ligin Joseph (data: IBTrACS), CC BY-SA

Consider Cyclone Ditwah. Its peak winds were around 75 km/h (47 mph). That’s windy, but nothing special. In the UK, it would be classified merely as a “gale” rather than a “storm”. It was far weaker than the 220 km/h winds of the powerful 1978 cyclone that also struck Sri Lanka. Yet Ditwah still caused massive devastation.

What explains this apparent contradiction? It’s too early to say definitively, but climate change is likely a part of the story. Even when storms are not especially strong in wind terms, the amount of rain they carry is increasing.

A warmer atmosphere holds more water

A well established meteorological rule helps explain why. For every degree of global warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture.

As the planet warms, the air above us becomes a larger reservoir, waiting to dump more water on us. When storms form, they can tap into this expanded supply, often in extremely short bursts. Even if wind speeds are modest, the rainfall alone can be catastrophic.

The oceans matter even more

Warming oceans play an even more powerful role, as cyclones draw their energy from warm ocean waters. Satellite data from late November shows just how warm the eastern Indian Ocean was, with large areas more than 1°C above normal during Ditwah and Senyar.

Coloured map of Indian Ocean and SE Asian seas
In the days before the cyclones formed (20–24 November), the oceans were even warmer than usual, creating conditions that could have fuelled and intensified the rainfall. Ligin Joseph (Data: OISST; track positions are approximate), CC BY-SA

Such warm anomalies are no longer unusual. The oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, and long-term observations show a clear upward trend in ocean temperatures.

That doesn’t necessarily mean cyclones are becoming more frequent – their formation still depends on other ingredients, such as low wind shear (small differences in wind speed and direction with height) and the right atmospheric structure.

What warmer oceans do change, however, is the amount of energy available to any storm that does manage to form. When the ocean is warmer, cyclones have more fuel and evaporation increases, loading the atmosphere with moisture that can fall as intense rain once a storm develops. Even weak cyclones can therefore hold exceptional amounts of rain.

Coloured map of Indian Ocean and SE Asian seas
Evaporation averaged for 26–27 November. Ditwah especially travelled over warm waters supplying large amounts of moisture to the atmosphere. Ligin Joseph (Data: ERA5), CC BY-SA

The winds near the surface help this process along. As they move across the ocean, they sweep away the moisture-filled air just above the water and replace it with drier air, allowing evaporation to continue. Put together, warmer oceans, higher evaporation, and an atmosphere that can store more moisture, these factors can significantly intensify the rainfall associated with cyclones.

Coastline hugging makes flooding worse

Local geography amplified these effects. Both Ditwah and Senyar formed unusually close to land and travelled along the coastline for an extended period. This meant they stayed over warm waters long enough to continuously draw moisture, but remained close enough to land to dump that moisture as intense rainfall almost immediately.

Cyclone Ditwah, in particular, moved slowly as it approached Sri Lanka. Slow-moving storms can be especially dangerous as they repeatedly dump rain over the same area. Even if winds are weak, this combination of warm seas, coastal proximity and slow forward speed can be devastating.

A new threat

These storms suggest that climate change – especially ocean warming – is reshaping the risks posed by cyclones. The most dangerous storms may no longer simply be the ones with the strongest winds, but also the ones with the most moisture.

Forecasting systems, including new AI-powered weather models, are getting better at predicting cyclone tracks and wind speeds. Yet rainfall-driven flooding remains far harder to forecast. As oceans continue to warm, governments and disaster agencies will need to prepare for storms that may be weak in wind but extreme in rain.

These insights are based on preliminary analysis and emerging scientific understanding. More detailed peer-reviewed studies will be needed to pinpoint exactly why Ditwah and Senyar produced such extreme rainfall. But the pattern that is emerging – weak cyclones delivering outsized floods in a warming world – must not be ignored.

Ligin Joseph, PhD Candidate, Oceanography, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue ReadingEven ‘weak’ cyclones are being turned into deadly rainmakers by fast-warming oceans

A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person

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Image of a private jet by Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Image of a private jet by Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK.

Billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement double the average for the Standard and Poor group of 500 companies – Oxfam  

The investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2 each year – the equivalent of France – at an individual annual average that is a million times higher than someone in the bottom 90 percent of humanity.

Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, is a report published by Oxfam based on a detailed analysis of the investments of 125 of the richest billionaires in some of the world’s biggest corporates and the carbon emissions of these investments. These billionaires have a collective $2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies. 

The report finds that these billionaires’ investments give an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than 2.76 tonnes of CO2e which is the average for those living in the bottom 90 percent. 

The actual figure is likely to be higher still, as published carbon emissions by corporates have been shown to systematically underestimate the true level of carbon impact, and billionaires and corporates who do not publicly reveal their emissions, so could not be included in the research, are likely to be those with a high climate impact.

“These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long,” said Dabi.

Jeff Bezos's superyacht 'Koru' often travels accompanied by a smaller 'support' superyacht. Image by Conmat13 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia.
Jeff Bezos’s superyacht ‘Koru’ often travels accompanied by a smaller ‘support’ superyacht. Image by Conmat13 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia.

“Emissions from billionaire lifestyles, their private jets and yachts are thousands of times the average person, which is already completely unacceptable. But if we look at emissions from their investments, then their carbon emissions are over a million times higher,” said Dabi.

Contrary to average people, studies show the world’s wealthiest individuals’ investments account for up to 70 percent of their emissions. Oxfam has used public data to calculate the “investment emissions” of billionaires with over 10 percent stakes in a corporation, by allocating them a share of the reported emissions of the corporates in which they are invested in proportion to their stake. 

The study also found billionaires had an average of 14 percent of their investments in polluting industries such as energy and materials like cement. This is twice the average for investments in the Standard and Poor 500. Only one billionaire in the sample had investments in a renewable energy company.  

The choice of investments billionaires make is shaping the future of our economy, for example, by backing high carbon infrastructure – locking in high emissions for decades to come. The study found that if the billionaires in the sample moved their investments to a fund with stronger environmental and social standards, it could reduce the intensity of their emissions by up to four times.

“The super-rich need to be taxed and regulated away from polluting investments that are destroying the planet. Governments must put also in place ambitious regulations and policies that compel corporations to be more accountable and transparent in reporting and radically reducing their emissions,” said Dabi.

Oxfam has estimated that a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could raise $1.4 trillion a year, vital resources that could help developing countries – those worst hit by the climate crisis – to adapt, address loss and damage and carry out a just transition to renewable energy. According to the UNEP adaptation costs for developing countries could rise to $300 billion per year by 2030. Africa alone will require $600 billion between 2020 to 2030. Oxfam is also calling for steeply higher tax rates for investments in polluting industries to deter such investments.

The report says that many corporations are off track in setting their climate transition plans, including hiding behind unrealistic and unreliable decarbonization plans with the promise of attaining net zero targets only by 2050. Fewer than one in three of the 183 corporates reviewed by Oxfam are working with the Science Based Targets Initiative. Only 16 percent have set net zero targets. 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.

Continue ReadingA billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person

Fidel Castro’s final reflections

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Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in 2014. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Nine years after his death, we look back at some of the most relevant themes in Fidel Castro’s final writings after stepping down as President of Cuba.

Fidel Castro is often remembered as one of the most iconic leaders of the 20th century. Despite Washington’s unrelenting attempts to overthrow and even assassinate him, Fidel continued his rule and the development of the Cuban Revolution, which began in 1959 after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

Much is written on his reflections on the development of the revolutionary struggle in the second half of the 20th century, his emblematic speeches, and his universal vision that combined the best of Leninist pragmatism with the sharpness of anti-colonial critical thinking. But Fidel’s vision of the future of humanity during his last years of life, an activity that demanded many hours of reading and writing, is often overlooked.

Read more: Fidel

In fact, Fidel resigned as President of Cuba in 2008, with the aim of ensuring that the transition to another leader would not jeopardize the existence of the Cuban Revolution; many believed that after his death, the Communist Party of Cuba’s government would collapse.

And while many said that Fidel continued to lead the country after his resignation, the truth is that his production of essays and articles increased exponentially. Foreign policy, ecology, coups d’état, and even reflections on baseball and sports were all topics that Castro covered in his copious written work, generally published in Cuban and international newspapers.

The right to live

Fidel insisted that if human beings continued down the path of savage capitalism, they would bring about the end of their own existence. For Fidel, climate change was not only a transformation of certain environmental aspects, but also the destruction of human existence: “Continuing the battle and demanding at all meetings, particularly those in Bonn and Mexico, the right of humanity to exist… is, in our opinion, the only way forward.”

Here Fidel took a stance far removed from any short- or medium-term ideological dispute to adopt a long-term vision, according to which human beings have been incapable of properly managing a legacy of billions of years once they appeared on Earth: “[Human beings] benefit from a fabulous legacy of 4 billion years provided by the Earth… They are only 200,000 years old, but they have already changed the face of the world.”

Furthermore, he found any kind of military spending deeply inappropriate in the face of the inexorable arrival of the end of humanity. “The world is suffering the consequences of climate change at the same time;… A war was the most inappropriate thing that could happen at this time.”

The nuclear danger

Few people knew more about an almost imminent nuclear war than Fidel Castro. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was on the brink of self-destruction. This concern never left Castro, when he warned of the massacre that would take place years later in Palestine: “As soon as the warships of the United States and Israel take their positions… the terrible war will begin.”

Furthermore, he clearly understood that a large-scale war, especially a nuclear one, would not transform the balance of power between social classes. Thus, he warned that after such a war, only “the administration of goods and services” would remain, and it would be carried out by the same elites that currently exist.

Imperialism as a method of domination

Fidel never abandoned the idea that imperialism continued to be the capitalist system’s most refined method for extracting value and subjugating the peoples of the Third World. Militaristic policy, the essence of imperialism, could never abandon its development, even at the expense of other more pressing needs.

He emphasized that in 2008, 42% of global spending was on military expenses: “While USD 1.5 trillion is spent on defense, the number of hungry people in the world reaches 1 billion.” This disparity was no accident, but rather a strategy executed by the great powers, under the pretext of defense cooperation, to impose economic programs and projects that further dispossess Third World countries. Thus, he openly criticized Obama’s foreign policy for Latin America as a ploy to control the Amazon

Science and technology

Fidel’s Marxism could not ignore the impressive technological transformation that took place during the first decades of the 21st century. In this sense, his reflections often focused on the use that transnational companies were making, and could make, in the field of production.

“If robots in the hands of transnational corporations can replace imperial soldiers in wars of conquest… (they can) flood it with robots that displace millions of workers.” Thus, Fidel announced a new process of dispossession of labor, as carried out by the merchant bourgeoisie at the dawn of the Modern Age.

Thus, technology, climate change, imperialism, and so on, could give the impression of rampant pessimism. However, thinking that could be a mistake. It is true that there was a great deal of caution and concern in Fidel’s final reflections, but this should not be confused with a renunciation of collective struggle.

Castro’s final texts always called for organization, for not giving up the strength of will, for continuing to think and work toward another future, one that is not at the mercy of the designs of a few. In short, as Romain Rolland stated and Gramsci popularized, Fidel’s thinking perfectly executed the maxim “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingFidel Castro’s final reflections

Whale and Dolphin Migrations are Being Disrupted by Climate Change

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Original article by Teresa Tomassoni republished from Inside Climate News under Creative Common License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

A humpback whale jumps out of the waters of the Pacific Ocean near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Credit: Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images

Rising ocean temperatures, heatwaves and dwindling prey are forcing marine mammals into new and more dangerous waters, scientists warn.

For millennia, some of the world’s largest filter-feeding whales, including humpbacks, fin whales and blue whales, have undertaken some of the longest migrations on earth to travel between their warm breeding grounds in the tropics to nutrient-rich feeding destinations in the poles each year. 

“Nature has finely tuned these journeys, guided by memory and environmental cues that tell whales when to move and where to go,” said Trisha Atwood, an ecologist and associate professor at Utah State University’s Quinney College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. But, she said, climate change is “scrambling these signals,” forcing the marine mammals to veer off course. And they’re not alone. 

Earlier this year, Atwood joined more than 70 other scientists to discuss the global impacts of climate change on migratory species in a workshop convened by the United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. The organization monitors and protects more than 1,000 species that cross borders in search of food, mates and favorable conditions to nurture their offspring. 

More than 20 percent of these species are on the brink of extinction. It was the first time the convention had gathered for such a purpose, and their findings, published this month in a report, were alarming. 

“Almost no migratory species is untouched by climate change,” Atwood said in an email to Inside Climate News. 

From whales and dolphins, to arctic shorebirds and elephants, all are affected by rising temperatures, extreme weather and shifting ecosystems, which are disrupting migratory routes and reshaping critical habitats across the planet. 

Asian elephants, for instance, are being driven to higher ground and closer to human settlements as they search for food and water amidst intensifying droughts, fueling more frequent human-elephant conflicts, the report found. Shorebirds are reaching their Arctic breeding grounds out of sync with the insect blooms their chicks depend on to survive. 

The seagrass meadows that migrating sea turtles and dugongs feed on are disappearing due to warmer waters, cyclones and sea level rise, according to the report. To date, around 30 percent of the world’s known seagrass beds have been lost, threatening not only the animals that depend on them, but also humans. These vital ecosystems store around 20 percent of the world’s oceanic carbon, in addition to supporting fisheries and protecting coastlines. 

A view of seagrass meadows found in the depths of Izmit Bay off the coast of Karamursel, Turkey. Credit: Tahsin Ceylan/Anadolu via Getty Images
A view of seagrass meadows found in the depths of Izmit Bay off the coast of Karamursel, Turkey. Credit: Tahsin Ceylan/Anadolu via Getty Images

Together, these examples reveal how climate change is tipping the delicate balance migratory species have long relied on to survive. 

“Climate change is disrupting this balance by altering when and where resources appear, how abundant they are, the environmental conditions species must endure, and the other organisms they interact with, reshaping entire networks of predators and competitors,” Atwood said. 

Especially amongst marine life. 

On the United States’ West Coast, for instance, Atwood said, warming waters are pushing juvenile great white sharks out of their traditional southern habitats. This shift has led to a sharp rise in sea otter deaths in Monterey Bay, California, where they are increasingly getting bitten by the sharks.

Whales and dolphins are particularly vulnerable species as rising temperatures threaten both their prey and their habitat, according to the report. 

Heatwaves in the Mediterranean are projected to reduce suitable habitat for endangered fin whales by up to 70 percent by mid-century as their prey dwindles or moves due to rising temperatures. In some places, such as the Northern Adriatic Sea, hotter temperatures may eventually prove intolerable for bottlenose dolphins. “Rising water temperatures could exceed the species’ physiological tolerance,” the report says, which also acknowledges that this is already happening in other parts of the world, such as the Amazon River. 

Two bottlenose dolphins play in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tarifa, Spain on Sept. 21. Credit: Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images

In 2023, more than 200 river dolphins, which migrate seasonally between tributaries and lagoons in the Amazon, died due to record-high temperatures, along with much of their prey. In some areas, their shallow aquatic habitats exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “The river systems were unusually empty and dry and the animals got isolated,” said Mark Simmonds, scientific councilor for marine pollution for the U.N. convention, who led some of the discussions around climate change impacts on cetaceans at the workshop in February. “They lost the water that they would have been living in.” 

Loss of prey in traditional habitats is of particular concern for migrating marine mammals that are forced to follow their prey into new, and sometimes more perilous, waters. 

This is particularly evident in the case of critically endangered North Atlantic Right whales, which the report says are especially prone to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear as they pursue their prey—tiny crustaceans called copepods—which are moving towards cooler waters. There are fewer than 400 of the whales left.

The North Pacific humpback whales that feed off the coast of California are also at risk. 

Original article by Teresa Tomassoni republished from Inside Climate News under Creative Common License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

Continue ReadingWhale and Dolphin Migrations are Being Disrupted by Climate Change

Summer 2025 ‘almost certainly’ UK’s hottest on record

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https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro

Victoria Jones/PA Wire

The United Kingdom has “almost certainly” had its hottest summer on record, according to provisional statistics from the Met Office.

The mean temperature across the country – which includes overnight lows as well as daytime highs – currently stands at 16.13C (61.03F) with less than a week of the season left to run.

This is well ahead of 2018, the previous warmest summer, which had a mean temperature of 15.76C (60.37F).

Temperatures during the rest of August would need to be four degrees below normal to prevent the record being broken – and this does not seem likely.

This is in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter and drier because of climate change.

…

Article continues at https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue ReadingSummer 2025 ‘almost certainly’ UK’s hottest on record