Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
“Fuelled by extreme weather and climate extremes, the frequency of climate-related disasters has dramatically risen in recent years,” said Raul Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen and the University of Santiago. “In some regions of the world, we are facing climate-fuelled disasters for which we are not prepared, and it is unlikely that we will be able to fully adapt to them.”
Richard Betts, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the UK, said many extremes, including longer heatwaves, heavier rainfall, increased drought and more fire weather, were becoming more severe due to human-caused climate change.
“We can still limit the extent to which extremes get worse if we urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero – but with global emissions still rising, it’s hard not to be increasingly concerned about how we will deal with what’s coming,” Betts said. “We already need to adapt to the changes that we’ve already caused, and adaptation will become increasingly difficult the longer we leave it to reduce emissions.”
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Francesca Guglielmo, a senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus satellite monitoring service, said 2024 had started as 2023 ended, with “exceptional temperatures and many extreme events”.
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Guglielmo said scientists were now considering risks that had been unthinkable until recently. “2023 has broken so many records that a number of new hypotheses, including the dawn of a new phase in the global warming rate, have been floated. These hypotheses were not nearly as prevalent a year ago.”
Super Typhoon Haiyan is shown off the Southeast Guiuan coast on November 7, 2013. (Image: NOAA)
The experts found five storms that would fit into their hypothetical category—and they have all happened since 2013.
Building on arguments and warnings that climate campaigners and experts have shared for years, a pair of scientists on Monday published a research article exploring the “growing inadequacy” of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and possibly adding a Category 6.
Global heating—driven by human activities, particularly the extraction and use of fossil fuels—is leading to stronger, more dangerous storms that are called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, and tropical cyclones in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.
The Saffir-Simpson scale “is the most widely used metric to warn the public of the hazards” of such storms, Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and James Kossin of the First Street Foundation explained in their new paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“There haven’t been any in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico yet but they have conditions conducive to a Category 6, it’s just luck that there hasn’t been one yet.”
“Our motivation is to reconsider how the open-endedness of the Saffir-Simpson scale can lead to underestimation of risk, and, in particular, how this underestimation becomes increasingly problematic in a warming world,” Wehner said in a statement.
The scale is: Category 1 (74-95 mph); Category 2 (96-110 mph); Category 3 (111-129 mph); Category 4 (130-156 mph); and Category 5 (greater than 157 mph). Wehner and Kossin considered creating a Category 6 for storms with sustained winds of at least 192 mph.
The pair found five storms that would fit into their Category 6: Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Hurricane Patricia in 2015, Typhoon Meranti in 2016, Typhoon Goni in 2020, and Typhoon Surigae in 2021.
“The most intense of these hypothetical Category 6 storms, Patricia, occurred in the Eastern Pacific making landfall in Jalisco, Mexico, as a Category 4 storm,” the paper notes. “The remaining Category 6 storms all occurred in the Western Pacific.”
“Two of them, Haiyan and Goni, made landfall on heavily populated islands of the Philippines. Haiyan was the costliest Philippines storm and the deadliest since the 19th century, long before any significant warning systems,” the paper continues.
The 2013 storm killed at least 6,300 people in the Philippines and left millions more homeless.
“There haven’t been any in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico yet but they have conditions conducive to a Category 6, it’s just luck that there hasn’t been one yet,” Wehner told The Guardian. “I hope it won’t happen, but it’s just a roll of the dice. We know that these storms have already gotten more intense, and will continue to do so.”
As the paper details, the pair found that “the Philippines, parts of Southeast Asia, and the Gulf of Mexico are regions where the risk of a Category 6 storm is currently of concern. This risk near the Philippines is increased by approximately 50% at 2°C above preindustrial and doubled at 4°C. Increased risk Category 6 storms in the Gulf of Mexico increases even more, doubling at 2°C above preindustrial and tripling at 4°C.”
Governments worldwide have signed on to the Paris agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2°C, with a more ambitious target of 1.5°C, but scientists stress that policymakers are crushing hopes of meeting either goal.
Wehner said that “even under the relatively low global warming targets of the Paris agreement… the increased chances of Category 6 storms are substantial in these simulations.”
The original argument for not having a Cat 6 was that a Cat 5 pretty much levels everything in its path, but @MichaelEMann points out that with better build codes and housing materials, some things do withstand Cat 5 winds. But 200 mph is exponentially worse.
The scientists considered what the addition of a Category 6 could look like, but they aren’t necessarily advocating for it. Kossin said in a statement that “tropical cyclone risk messaging is a very active topic, and changes in messaging are necessary to better inform the public about inland flooding and storm surge, phenomena that a wind-based scale is only tangentially relevant to.”
“While adding a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale would not solve that issue, it could raise awareness about the perils of the increased risk of major hurricanes due to global warming,” he continued. “Our results are not meant to propose changes to this scale, but rather to raise awareness that the wind-hazard risk from storms presently designated as Category 5 has increased and will continue to increase under climate change.”
The Washington Post on Monday also emphasized the need for improved communication about flooding and storm surge:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research shows such water-related hazards are hurricanes’ deadliest threats, said Deirdre Byrne, a NOAA oceanographer who studies ocean heat and its role in hurricane intensification. While adding a Category 6 “doesn’t seem inappropriate,” she said, combining the Saffir-Simpson scale with something like an A through E rating for inundation threats might have a greater impact.
“That might save even more lives,” Byrne said.
In a statement, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan seconded those concerns. He said NOAA forecasters have “tried to steer the focus toward the individual hazards,” including storm surge, flooding rains, and dangerous rip currents, rather than overemphasizing the storm category, and, by extension, the wind threats alone.
“It’s not clear that there would be a need for another category even if storms were to get stronger,” he said.
Even if the center has no plans to expand the wind scale, “talking about hypothetical Category 6 storms is a valuable communication strategy for policymakers and the public,” former NOAA hurricane scientist Jeff Masters wrote Monday, “because it is important to understand how much more damaging these new superstorms can be.”
It’s official: 2023 was Earth’s hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous record set in 2016 by a huge margin. Last year was also the first in which the world was close to 1.5°C (1.48°C) hotter than the pre-industrial average (1850-1900). We are brushing against the threshold scientists urged us to limit long-term warming to.
Some scientists, including former Nasa climatologist James Hansen, predict 2024 will be humanity’s first year beyond 1.5°C. As what were once dire warnings from climate experts become our shared reality, what can you expect?
The 1.5°C temperature target, enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, is not shattered on first contact. Most of the climate tipping points scientists fear could send warming hurtling out of control are not expected until Earth is consistently warmer than 1.5°C. The global average temperature is likely to dip down again once the present El Niño (a warm phase in a natural cycle focused on the equatorial Pacific Ocean) dissipates.
Instead, 2024 could be our first glimpse of Earth at 1.5°C. Here’s what research suggests it will look like for people and nature.
Ecosystems on the brink
Tropical coral reefs are in hot water. These habitats comprise a network of polyp-like animals (related to jellyfish) and colourful algae encased in calcium carbonate. The complex forms they build in shallow water around the Earth’s equator are thought to harbour more species than any other ecosystem.
“Corals have adapted to live in a specific temperature range, so when ocean temperatures are too hot for a prolonged period, corals can bleach – losing the colourful algae that live within their tissue and nourish them via photosynthesis – and may eventually die,” say coral biologists Adele Dixon and Maria Beger (University of Leeds) and physicists Peter Kalmus (Nasa) and Scott F. Heron (James Cook University).
Coral bleaching, once rare, now occurs on an almost annual basis. Damsea/Shutterstock
Climate change has already raised the frequency of these marine heatwaves. In a world made 1.5°C hotter, 99% of reefs will be exposed to intolerable heat too often for them to recover according to Dixon’s research, threatening food and income for roughly one billion people – not to mention biodiversity.
Coral reefs will earn their reputation as the “canaries in the coal mine” for climate change’s impact on the natural world. As global heating ticks up towards 2°C, the devastation already seen on reefs will become evident elsewhere according to an analysis by biodiversity scientist Alex Pigot at UCL:
“We found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would leave 15% of species at risk of abruptly losing at least one third of their current geographic range. However, this doubles to 30% of species on our present trajectory of 2.5°C of warming.”
Heat beyond human tolerance
Above 1.5°C, humanity risks provoking heatwaves so intense they defy the human body’s capacity to cool itself.
Intense heat and humidity have rarely conspired to create “wetbulb” temperatures of 35°C. This is the point at which the air is too hot and humid for sweating to cool you down – different from the “drybulb” temperature a thermometer reports.
Earth’s rising temperature could soon change that according to climate scientists Tom Matthews (Loughborough University) and Colin Raymond (California Institute of Technology).
“Modelling studies had already indicated that wetbulb temperatures could regularly cross 35°C if the world sails past the 2°C warming limit … with The Persian Gulf, South Asia and North China Plain on the frontline of deadly humid heat,” they say.
But different areas of the the world are warming at different rates. In a world that is 1.5°C hotter on average, temperatures in your local area may have actually risen by more than that.
To account for this, Matthews and Raymond studied records from individual weather stations worldwide and found that many sites were closing in much more rapidly on the lethal heat and humidity threshold.
“The frequency of punishing wetbulb temperatures (above 31°C, for example) has more than doubled worldwide since 1979, and in some of the hottest and most humid places on Earth, like the coastal United Arab Emirates, wetbulb temperatures have already flickered past 35°C,” they say.
For a chance to avoid these horrors, we must eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions heating Earth and that means rapidly phasing out coal, oil and gas, which account for 80% of energy use worldwide.
How fast? According to the latest estimate, published in October, very fast indeed.
“If humanity wants to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we can only emit another 250 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) of CO₂,” say climate and atmospheric scientists Chris Smith at the University of Leeds and Robin Lamboll at Imperial College London.
Heavy rain across southern Britain meant that most rivers in England swelled at the beginning of 2024, prompting widespread flooding.
The River Trent was among the most severely affected. Water levels at the Drakelow gauging station in the west Midlands reached 3.88 metres on January 4 – well above the previous record set less than four years earlier in February 2020.
Are floods growing larger and happening more often in the UK? There are two ways to answer this question. One is to consult computer models which project Earth’s climate in the future, and the other is to search the historical record.
Climate projections are important but highly uncertain as they indicate a wide range of potential futures for any given river. Projections also only tell part of the story as they do not reflect the patterns of water use, changes to groundwater levels or to the urban environment that can decide flooding on a particular river.
That’s why we give equal importance to historical data, although we cannot project past changes directly into the future. Historical archives of river monitoring data can help us understand how the largest floods are changing on the River Trent.
For instance, how is the 50-year water level (the highest point a river would be expected to reach in 50 years on average) changing? On the River Trent at Drakelow, the 50-year water level has risen from about 3.46 metres in 1959 to 3.83 metres in 2024. This means the largest floods are indeed getting bigger.
How the January 2024 floods compare
The flood water level on the Trent at the start of January 2024 was actually higher than what scientists would consider a once-in-50-year event in today’s warmer climate.
The 50-year water level on the River Trent has risen in 65 years. Grey circles indicate the highest water level in each year. L. Slater
Another way to understand how much floods have changed is to consider how often they happen today compared with the past. If we look at the 50-year level from 1959 (about 3.46 metres), how often would such a flood occur in today’s climate?
On the Trent, a 3.46-metre flood level would now be expected to occur every 9.38 years, on average, in 2024. This makes sense, considering there have already been six events in which the river level exceeded 3.5 metres since the 1980s. The historical data shows that extreme water levels are being reached more frequently on the Trent.
The 50-year flood level from 1959 (3.5 metres) now recurs every nine years in 2024. L. Slater
Our analysis of the Trent aligns with results from a previous study which looked at rivers across the rest of the UK. In many places, 50-year floods are now happening less than every ten years, on average.
This is partly due to climate change and also partly due to natural variations in the climate which see rivers cycle through spells of more and less flooding. The UK went through a “flood-poor” period in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and has been going through a “flood-rich” period since then.
Prepare for worse
It is worth noting that there are caveats to this type of analysis which tries to assess how extreme events are changing over time. Caution must be exercised when looking at long records of river levels given changes in river management practices and measurement techniques over time.
It should also be noted that these results use a different methodology to the industry standard for flood estimation.
But what matters is not the precise changes in the frequency of major floods (from 50 years down to nine or even two-and-a-half years, according to some statistical methods). It is understanding that the frequency of large floods is changing fast.
For many UK rivers with more extensive historical archives of river level measurements, floods appear to be occurring far more frequently than before. In a smaller number of places, they are occurring less frequently.
We need to better understand how flood risk will evolve in response to further human-induced warming. The UK’s efforts to predict and prepare for future floods are supported by the Environment Agency’s flood hydrology roadmap, which is mobilising a wide community of researchers and practitioners.
Overall, the UK must prepare to live with bigger floods and be able to predict flood-rich periods several years ahead. This starts with an understanding of how the severity and frequency of such events is changing.
To support this effort, we are preparing a range of tools to guide flood planners, including an interactive map allowing users to explore how flood return periods are changing across the UK. Being better prepared for extreme events in a warming climate starts with understanding what it will mean for your local area.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” said one campaigner. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts.”
The year 2023 was marked by weather events that made it increasingly clear that the Earth has entered what United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called the “era of global boiling,” with wildfires and prolonged heatwaves impacting millions of people and scientists confirming their suffering was the direct result of fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating.
But for the world’s five largest oil giants, the year marked record profits and the approval of several major new fossil fuel projects, allowing the companies to lavish their shareholders with payouts that are expected to exceed $100 billion—signaling that executives have little anxiety that demand for their products will fall, said one economist.
The companies—BP, Shell, Chevron,ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies—spent $104 billion on shareholder payouts in 2022, and are expected to reward investors with even more in buybacks and dividends for 2023, The Guardian reported.
Shell announced plans in November to pay investors at least $23 billion—more than six times the amount it planned to spend on renewable energy projects—while BP promised shareholders a 10% raise in dividends and Chevron could exceed the $75 billion stock buyback it announced early last year.
Alice Harrison, a campaigner for Global Witness, noted that fossil fuel shareholders will be enjoying their paydays as households across Europe struggle with fuel poverty and the world faces the rising threat of climate disasters brought on by the industry.
“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” Harrison told The Guardian. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts. Yet again millions of families won’t be able to afford to heat their homes this winter, and countries around the world will continue to suffer the extreme weather events of climate collapse. This is the fossil fuel economy, and it’s rigged in favor of the rich.”
It’s a happy new year for oil company shareholders enjoying massive dividends. The 5 largest majors are distributing over $100 billion. Not so happy a new year for British energy consumers who are subject to a new round of price increases, plunging more households into poverty. https://t.co/g3i4Zdoxo7
In 2023 campaigners intensified their demands for accountability from the oil, gas, and coal industries, and as of last month had successfully pressured more than 1,600 universities, pension funds, and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels. In the U.S., provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been touted as the “largest investment in climate and energy in American history,” went into effect.
But Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, The Guardian that if the industry were truly fearful of policymakers phasing out fossil fuel extraction and expediting a transition to renewable sources, they would be spending far less on new projects and shareholder payouts.
“For this to be the case you would have to believe that the energy transition is happening, and that demand for fossil fuels is going to fall,” Helm told The Guardian.
In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden infuriated climate campaigners by approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, which could lead to roughly 280 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions. His administration also included in a debt limit deal language that would expedite the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which could emit the equivalent of more than 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while the U.K. government greenlit a massive oil drilling field in the North Sea and French company TotalEnergies continued to construct the 900-mile-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which would transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
“These companies are investing a huge amount in new projects, and they’re handing out bigger dividends because they are confident that they’re going to make big returns,” Helm said. “And when we look at the state of our current climate progress, who’s to say they’re wrong?”
Climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate pointed out that the shareholder paydays are expected following a deal on a loss and damage fund at the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, aimed at helping developing countries to fight the climate emergency. That fund was hailed as “historic” and included a commitment of $700 million from wealthy countries—a sum that is expected to be dwarfed by fossil fuel investors’ profits.
Leaders at COP28 agreed to a “historic” $700 million in loss and damage funding.
Meanwhile BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies are about to reward their investors with record payouts of more than $100 billion. https://t.co/LRIrH4mFmz
“They have picked people’s pockets, fueled inflation and pollution, and deepened poverty,” U.K. House of Lords member and Tax Justice Network co-founder Prem Sikka said of the oil giants. “Governments do nothing to end their monopolistic control. Need to break-up this cartel.”
