A wildfire burning near the coast of Syracuse in Sicily, Italy, toward the end of last month. Photograph: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters
WMO report details extreme weather events causing climatic feedback loop with serious health consequences
Big increases in wildfires and heatwaves supercharged by the climate crisis are hindering improvements to air quality around the world, UN experts have said.
Regions that had recorded a fall in pollution emitted by cars and industrial sites are facing new threats to air quality because of exposure to smoke from wildfires, according to a new report, while rising temperatures caused by intense heatwaves are causing a surge in ground-level ozone.
In turn, the pollution generated by these climate-linked events is itself contributing to climate breakdown, creating a feedback loop that risks dragging the world deeper into environmental catastrophe.
“Air quality and climate cannot be treated as separate subjects; they are deeply intertwined and have to be treated together,” said Lorenzo Labrador, a scientific officer of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which issued the report.
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Tactical firefighters set a backfire to a plot of land to prevent the wildfire from spreading as the winds change in Louchats, France, on July 17, 2022. (Photo by Thibaud Moritz/AFP via Getty Images)
“Overshoot doesn’t have to mean surrender,” said one campaigner. “The size and length of that overshoot is still being written by the decisions governments make this year.”
The world has officially moved past the point where preventing a temperature rise above 1.5°C will be possible, scientists said in a United Nations report released Wednesday, which made clear that communities can expect sea levels to continue rising, heatwaves to intensify, and hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding to become more frequent and dangerous—all climate impacts that experts have long warned about as policymakers have failed to rapidly draw down greenhouse gas emissions.
But the authors of the report, published by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and titled “Limiting Overshoot,” emphasized that the inevitable temperature rise must not be viewed as a point of no return, and that steps can and must be taken to ensure the overshoot of the 1.5°C goal is only temporary.
The best-case scenario is now a peak global temperature of 1.8°C, said the report’s dozens of authors, with an “overshoot, peak, and decline” pathway still possible before the end of this century if policymakers ensure that planet-heating fossil fuel emissions are drastically reduced—starting immediately.
The report is the first ever to establish the inevitability of overshooting the 1.5°C goal that countries were tasked with working toward when the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, and to chart a path toward ensuring the planet can ultimately make its way back down to 1.5°C—hopefully limiting the time above the threshold to a few decades.
We can't avoid exceeding 1.5°C—but we can still limit the damage.
The new UNEP Limiting Overshoot report is a powerful reminder that the climate crisis is already reshaping our world. Coral reefs are bleaching, glaciers are disappearing, and biodiversity is under growing… pic.twitter.com/hbfLvedqIx
If the world remains above 1.5°C over preindustrial temperatures long-term, said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen, “there are no good outcomes.”
Last year, global temperatures were already about 1.3°C to 1.4°C above the preindustrial average, The Washington Postreported, and the effects on the Earth have been made clear as wildfires have engulfed parts of Canada and South America; a glacial collapse led to flooding that killed more than 1,000 people in Nepal last week; and extreme heatkilled more than 1,000 people across Europe this summer.
“Across the globe, extreme heatwaves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder, and last longer—costing more lives and causing deeper disruption,” said Andersen. “Now is the time we must double down on climate action. We can—and must—get on the right path. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening resilience and adaptation, and ensuring exceedance of 1.5°C is as small and short as possible.”
The scientists said planet-heating fossil fuel emissions must be slashed by 55% by 2035 and almost entirely eliminated by the middle of the century to limit the global temperature rise to 1.8°C above preindustrial levels.
Climate scientist Joeri Rogeli of Imperial College London, a lead author of the report, told the Post that swift action is crucial, as “for every five years that humanity delays reducing emissions… the peak temperature the world will ultimately face rises by at least a 10th of a degree.”
The scientists emphasized that avoiding the 1.5°C limit would have been a less daunting goal than reversing the temperature rise. Policies that continue allowing oil, gas, and coal companies to extract fossil fuels will make both goals difficult to achieve.
The report was released weeks after President Donald Trumpterminated offshore wind energy projects in the US—the latest of several renewable energy projects he’s killed—and moved to take ownership of Venezuelan oil fields. Recent global climate summits have been attended by an outsized number of corporate lobbyists for fossil fuel industries, weakening the climate commitments that have come out of the meetings.
Fenton Lutunatabua of 350.org Pacific noted that the report was also released as Pacific countries meet at the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting.
“All eyes are on one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters, Australia, and how they act on this urgent warning,” said Lutunatabua. “The climate crisis is here and any delay in mitigation, in phasing out coal, oil, and gas, will only make our adaptation pressures harder and more expensive to bear.”
The report emphasizes that even if the world is able to reduce planetary heating once global temperatures shoot above 1.5°C, some impacts of continued fossil fuel extraction will be irreversible, including the melting of glaciers and the extinction of some species.
But UN Secretary-General António Guterres was among those who said “an overshoot of ambition” is now required to mitigate the damage as much as possible.
“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires, and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead. We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible,” said Guterres.
Along with rapidly cutting emissions, the report calls “carefully governed carbon dioxide removal (CDR)—the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it through afforestation or other means—an essential part of the mix.”
CDR methods—from planting forests to act as carbon sinks to technological fixes—come with limitations and are potentially reversible. Forests that are planted could be destroyed by wildfires, while CDR technology is largely unproven and can be energy-intensive—negating many of the benefits.
“Overall, even optimistic CDR scaling is unlikely to deliver a temperature reversal beyond a few tenths of a degree this century,” reads the report. “This emphasizes the importance of focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter and another report author, told the Post that CDR cannot be relied upon as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
At 350.org, head of campaigns and networks Savio Carvalho said that “there is no version of ‘limiting overshoot’ that doesn’t start with ending new coal, oil, and gas expansion today.”
“This report confirms what communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have been telling us for years: that delay is not a neutral act, it is a decision,” said Carvalho. “We’ve just watched a glacier collapse bury Himalayan communities under mud and water, and we’re watching Pacific nations lose land to the sea in real time. UNEP is right that overshoot doesn’t have to mean surrender: The size and length of that overshoot is still being written by the decisions governments make this year, on fossil fuel phase-out, technology transfer, and on finance for the countries least responsible and most exposed.”
Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s minister of environment, urbanization, and climate change and the president-designate of the 31st UN Climate Change Conference (COP31), said the upcoming summit scheduled for November “must turn this urgency into concrete action.”
“Every fraction of a degree matters, and every year spent in overshoot increases climate risks and the potential for irreversible losses,” said Kurum. “The Overshoot Report makes clear that exceeding 1.5°C should not be seen as a new destination, but as a pathway we must urgently work to minimize and reverse. This requires rapid and sustained emissions reductions, alongside ambitious adaptation to protect people, communities, and ecosystems.”
“We need to accelerate global electrification, reduce methane emissions from waste, strengthen the climate resilience of cities, and enhance the resilience of marine and coastal ecosystems,” he added. “The choices we make today will determine how high temperatures peak, how long they remain there, and how safely we can return to 1.5°C.”
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A woman in London uses a newspaper to shelter from the sun during the peak of June’s heatwave in England and Wales. Friends of the Earth said it was a ‘national scandal’ the UK was so dangerously unprepared. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Extreme heat led to 440 deaths a day during June peak, say scientists, with climate crisis ramping up temperatures
The heatwave that affected England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak, scientists have estimated. Across the whole of the June heatwave, plus the one in May, about 2,700 people lost their lives prematurely.
The data starkly illustrates the danger of extreme heat, which is being supercharged by the climate crisis. More than 40% of the people affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused global heating to date, according to the analysis. For comparison, about four people die each day as a result of road traffic collisions and about 35 a day because of alcohol and drug use, according to government statistics.
Extreme temperatures will worsen as continued fossil fuel burning pumps pollution into the atmosphere, making cuts in emissions and measures to protect people from global heating urgent, say experts.
“These are big numbers and we don’t want to see this many people dying,” said Dr Clair Barnes, at Imperial College London, who led the analysis. “We’ve reached the point where the heat is so extreme that we can’t help but acknowledge the impacts it has.”
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The south-east of England experienced mains water supply issues last week due to high demand in the hot weather
The UK could see a warmer-than-average summer with the potential for more heatwaves, according to latest forecasts.
The Met Office released its three-month summer outlook on 1 June – the first day of meteorological summer – citing higher-than-normal chances of hotter weather during the month.
And for the whole summer – which runs through to the end of August – the outlook suggests “an increased chance of heatwaves and heat-related impacts”.
It comes after a late spring heatwave saw temperature records shattered across the UK.
A new all-time May record of 35.1C was set in Kew Gardens, London, replacing the previous record of 32.8C from 1944.
Yellow and amber heat health alerts were also issued for the first time this year.
Now, long-range forecasts from the Met Office and MeteoGroup – the latter being providers of BBC Weather data – suggest the summer ahead will bring the risk of additional heatwaves.
A “few notable high temperature spikes” are also possible according to MeteoGroup.
They also go on to say that “above-average temperatures” are expected for each of the months of June, July and August, and “significant bursts” of heat are expected in the UK, and across Europe.
But, according to the Met Office, the higher than average temperatures forecast comes as having a hotter summer is now twice as likely than the reference averaging period of 1991-2020, consistent with our warming climate.
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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
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.
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