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.
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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