Researchers sound alarm on ‘irreversible climate disaster’, Earth’s 25 vital signs hit extremes

PTI, Oct 9, 2024, 7:55 PM IST

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Researchers have sounded an alarm on a possibly “irreversible climate disaster” as 25 of the 35 planetary vital signs that help track climate change every year hit record levels.

Extreme weather events becoming more frequent, and intense and emissions from fossil fuels are at an all-time high — these are a couple of the 25 vital signs, the international team, including researchers from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, Germany, said in a report.

Other vital signs they described included Earth’s average surface temperature, ocean heat, global sea levels and human population — all touching record highs. The human population has been increasing at roughly two lakh a day, they said.

Climate change made the experience of devastating heatwaves of 2024 across Asia, including the longest one ever in India, much more frequent and extreme, the authors said in the analysis, titled ‘The 2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth’ and published in the journal Bioscience.

Greenland and Antarctic ice hit record lows in terms of both mass and thickness, they added.

Emissions of methane and nitrous oxide — potent greenhouse gases — have reached unprecedented levels, they added. Nitrous oxide levels were found to have increased by roughly 40 per cent between 1980 and 2020.

Consumption of coal, oil and gas together rose by 1.5 per cent in 2023, compared to that in 2022, while use of fossil fuels remains roughly 15 times that of solar and wind energy, the researchers said.

In 2023, the team had shown 20 of the 35 vital signs to be touching record extremes.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperilled,” the authors wrote.

A “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis” could be unravelling, they said and emphasised that current policies place the planet on track to achieving 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 — far exceeding the Paris Agreement goals of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The authors highlighted several climate tipping points, or ‘points of no return’, that may be fast approaching and can potentially trigger irreversible catastrophic changes. Some of these points included the collapse of major ice sheets and forest dieback — it refers to the slow, eventual death of trees which can threaten the resilience of a forest ecosystem.

Tree cover loss around the world was found to have increased from 22.8 mega hectares a year in 2022 to 28.3 mega hectares a year in 2023.

“We’re already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval, which jeopardises life on Earth like nothing humans have ever seen,” lead author William Ripple, from the University of Oregon, US, said.

As the “future of humanity hangs in the balance”, the researchers called for bold, transformative change, including measures targeted at reducing overconsumption and human population.