Back in late 2017, less than a year after I started this blog, I wrote an item about how climate change deniers lied about sea level rise1. Later, in October 2023, I wrote an item about how the rate of sea level rise was itself increasing. The average rate of increase in sea level between 1993 and 2015 was 3.3 millimetres (mm) per annum, while the average sea level rise between 2013 and 2022 was 4.62 mm per annum2.
The rate of sea level increase for 2024 was expected to be 4.3 mm per annum but it turned out to be considerably more at 5.9 mm per annum. In recent years, about two thirds of sea level rise has been the addition of water into the ocean from melting ice sheets and glaciers, with about one third coming from thermal expansion. However, in 2024 those ratios flipped, with two thirds coming from thermal expansion and only one third coming from melting ice. This is because 2024 was the warmest year on record3.
While 2024 has been confirmed as the warmest year on record globally, it is the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level. The last 10 years have been the 10 warmest years on record4.
In their first report from 1990, the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that global mean surface air temperature would rise by about 0.3°C per decade and that it will likely see a global increase of 1.0°C by 2025. The earth passed that mark in 20185.
The World Meteorological Organisation has predicted that at least one of the next five years will probably exceed 2024 as the warmest on record, and that at least one of them will be 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level, and it is most likely that the 5-year average warming for 2025-2029 will be more than 1.5°C6.
The climate news keeps getting worse because we keep blasting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Global average carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere set a new record high in 2024. It is now at 422.7 parts per million (ppm). This is an increase of 3.75 ppm over 2023; the largest one-year increase on record7.
When I started this blog just under 8 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at about 404 ppm. Millions will die or be displaced because of this continued inactivity in dealing with this problem. Indeed, it has only been exacerbated by the christofascist takeover of the US and the destruction of its deeply flawed democracy.
Sources
- https://blotreport.com/2017/10/30/deniers-sea-level/
- https://blotreport.com/2023/10/28/where-we-are-headed-sea-level/
- https://www.nasa.gov/missions/jason-cs-sentinel-6/sentinel-6-michael-freilich/nasa-analysis-shows-unexpected-amount-of-sea-level-rise-in-2024/
- https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level
- https://blotreport.com/2019/03/17/stating-the-obvious-30-years-too-late-2/
- https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/global-climate-predictions-show-temperatures-expected-remain-or-near-record-levels-coming-5-years
- https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
