This weekly round-up brings you key climate news from the past seven days, including an attribution study linking climate change to Hurricane Helene and the International Energy Agency’s latest data on global renewable energy expansion.
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1. Hurricane Helene’s Deadly Rainfall and Wind Increased by Human-Made Climate Change, Study Reveals
By analyzing weather data and climate models to compare how similar events have changed between today’s climate – which has warmed approximately 1.3C – and the cooler pre-industrial climate, a team of leading scientists found that climate change made Helene’s winds some 11% more intense and its rains 10% heavier.
Along its 600-mile (965-kilometer) path, Helene killed at least 227 people, the second-highest number after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Helene strengthened from a Category 2 to a Category 4 hurricane in just ten hours, a phenomenon that is happening more and more often with climate change. Rapidly intensifying storms leave less time for authorities to issue warning systems, putting coastal communities in great danger. In 2022, for example, Hurricane Ian devastated portions of Florida after it rapidly intensified, packing two days’ worth of rapid intensification into less than 36 hours.
Helene’s rapid intensification, like most recent hurricanes, was fuelled by ultra-warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which are currently about 3.6F (2C) above average. The likelihood of such high sea temperatures, the study revealed, was 200-500 times higher because of climate change.
Read more here.
2. ‘Storm of the Century’: Category 5 Hurricane Milton Approaches Battered Florida Days After Deadly Helene, As Scientists Warn of Compound Event
Milton could be “one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), which also warned that the hurricane could double in size before its expected landfall on Wednesday.
Scientists are warning of the risk of a compound event as the US state is still recovering from Hurricane Helene. A compound event is the occurrence of two or more climate-related factors in close successions, or even simultaneously, which combined result in a more significant impact than if each factor were considered in isolation.
A 2023 study published in Nature Climate Change found that “the chance of sequential [tropical cyclones] hazards has been increasing over the past several decades at many US locations,” with climate change potentially causing “unprecedented compounding of extreme hazards.”
Experts are worried that Helene’s debris could be a major hazard during Milton. This has prompted authorities to rush cleaning operations before the hurricane, currently a Category 5 hurricane, makes landfall in highly populated Tampa Bay.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Tampa’s police chief Lee Bercaw warned, adding that Milton “could be the storm of the century.”
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell on Tuesday warned that hurricane misinformation and conspiracy theories, many of which can be traced back to White House Republican nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, are taking a heavy toll on hurricane responders and survivors.
“It’s creating distrust in the federal government, but also the state government, and we have so many first responders that have been working to go out and help these communities,” Criswell told reporters.
Read more here.
3. Historic Global Growth of Renewables Set to Outpace Countries’ 2030 Targets But Fall Short of COP28 Tripling Goal, IEA Says
Over 5,500 gigawatts of new renewable capacity will be added globally in the next five years, the equivalent of the current total power capacity of China, the European Union, India, and the US combined, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. According to energy think tank Ember, renewable energy currently accounts for little over 30% of global electricity.
Growing demand from the private sector and households, boosted by “supportive” energy security and industrial policies in almost 140 countries, has played a “crucial” role in making renewables cost-competitive with fossil-fired power plants, according to the report. These policies have contributed to declining costs, shorter permitting timelines and widespread social acceptance.
In January, the IEA said that an unprecedented expansion of renewable electricity was “giving [the world] a real chance of achieving the goal of tripling global capacity by 2030” set by nearly 200 countries at COP28 last year of tripling global renewable energy capacity by the decade’s end.
The new estimate revealed Wednesday still falls short of the goal, albeit not by a large amount, though the agency added that “fully meeting the tripling target is entirely possible if governments take near-term opportunities for action.”
Read more here.
4. 2023 Marked By Exceptionally Dry Rivers and Largest Glacial Melting Rates in Decades, WMO Says
From prolonged droughts to deadly floods and record glacial melting, 2023 was undoubtedly a bad year for water systems and resources, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest State of Global Water Resources report.
Last year, the hottest on record globally, was also the driest year for rivers in 33 years, with exceptional drought conditions affecting large territories of North, Central, and South America. The Mississippi – North America’s longest river – and the Amazon River – the world’s largest river by discharge volume of water – both recorded record-low water levels.
Climate change also affected glaciers, which last year suffered the largest mass loss in the last five decades. More than 600 gigatons (Gt) of water were lost across all glaciated regions of the world, the second consecutive year that such a widespread melting is recorded. Rapid ice loss is threatening coastal communities around the world with sea level rise, which risks displacing over 410 million people by the end of the century.
Read more here.
5. LNG 33% Worse for Climate Than Coal Over 20-Year Period, Groundbreaking Research Reveals
In its new peer-reviewed study, American ecosystem scientist Robert Howarth concluded that Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) has a larger climate impact than any other planet-warming fossil fuel, including the dirtiest of all, coal.
Coal, the cheapest and dirtiest fossil fuel, is the single-largest source of carbon emissions, responsible for over 0.3C of the 1.2C increase in global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. It is also a major contributor to air pollution.
But Howarth’s research came to the conclusion that LNG is 33% worse in terms of greenhouse gas emissions over a 20-year period compared to coal, when accounting for its life-cycle emissions. Indeed, about two-thirds of the total emissions occur before the final burning of gas to power homes and businesses.
Read more here.
