(The Conversation) – The oceans are heating up as the planet warms.

This past year, 2024, was the warmest ever measured for the global ocean, following a record-breaking 2023. In fact, every decade since 1984, when satellite recordkeeping of ocean temperatures started, has been warmer than the previous one.

A warmer ocean means increased evaporation, which in turn results in heavier rains in some areas and droughts in others. It can power hurricanes and downpours. It can also harm the health of coastal marine areas and sea life – coral reefs suffered their most extensive bleaching event on record in 2024, with damage in many parts of the world.

Warming ocean water also affects temperatures on land by changing weather patterns. The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Jan. 10 that data showed 2024 had also broken the record for the warmest year globally, with global temperatures about 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.6 Celsius) above pre-industrial times. That would mark the first full calendar year with average warming above 1.5 C, a level countries had agreed to try to avoid passing long-term.

Climate change, by and large, takes the blame. Greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere trap heat, and about 90% of the excess heat caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human activities is absorbed by the ocean.

But while it’s clear that the ocean has been warming for quite some time, its temperatures over the past two years have been far above the previous decades. That leaves two mysteries for scientists.

It’s not just El Niño

The cyclic climate pattern of the El Niño Southern Oscillation can explain part of the warmth over the past two years.

During El Niño periods, warm waters that usually accumulate in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean move eastward toward the coastlines of Peru and Chile, leaving the Earth slightly warmer overall. The latest El Niño began in 2023 and caused global average temperatures to rise well into early 2024.

But the oceans have been even warmer than scientists expected. For example, global temperatures in 2023-2024 followed a similar growth and decline pattern across the seasons as the previous El Niño event, in 2015-2016, but they were about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) higher at all times in 2023-2024.

Scientists are puzzled and left with two problems to solve. They must figure out whether something else contributed to the unexpected warming and whether the past two years have been a sign of a sudden acceleration in global warming.

The role of aerosols

An intriguing idea, tested using climate models, is that a swift reduction in aerosols over the past decade may be one of the culprits.

Aerosols are solid and liquid particles emitted by human and natural sources into the atmosphere. Some of them have been shown to partially counteract the impact of greenhouse gases by reflecting solar radiation back into space. However, they also are responsible for poor air quality and air pollution.

Many of these particles with cooling properties are generated in the process of burning fossil fuels. For example, sulfur aerosols are emitted by ship engines and power plants. In 2020, the shipping industry implemented a nearly 80% cut in sulfur emissions, and many companies shifted to low-sulfur fuels. But the larger impact has come from power plants reducing their emissions, including a big shift in this direction in China. So, while technologies have cut these harmful emissions, that means a brake slowing the pace of warming is weakened.

Is this a warming surge?

The second puzzle is whether the planet is seeing a warming surge or not.

Temperatures are clearly rising, but the past two years have not been warm enough to support the notion that we may be seeing an acceleration in the rate of global warming.

Analysis of four temperature datasets covering the 1850-2023 period has shown that the rate of warming has not shown a significant change since around the 1970s. The same authors, however, noted that only a rate increase of at least 55% – about half a degree Celsius and nearly a full degree Fahrenheit over one year – would make the warming acceleration detectable in a statistical sense.

From a statistical standpoint, then, scientists cannot exclude the possibility that the 2023-2024 record ocean warming resulted simply from the “usual” warming trend that humans have set the planet on for the past 50 years. A very strong El Niño contributed some natural variability.

From a practical standpoint, however, the extraordinary impacts the planet has witnessed – including extreme weather, heat waves, wildfires, coral bleaching and ecosystem destruction – point to a need to swiftly reduce carbon dioxide emissions to limit ocean warming, regardless of whether this is a continuation of an ongoing trend or an acceleration.

Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

(The Conversation) – October to April is normally considered to be the wet season in California, yet this January, the region is experiencing some of the most devastating fires it’s ever seen.

As of January 10, five major fires in and around Los Angeles have burned over 29,053 acres, leading to the evacuation of more than 180,000 people, the destruction of over 2,000 buildings (mainly homes), and an estimated damage cost of at least US$52 billion (£42.5 billion). Ten lives have been lost, and these numbers are expected to rise as the fires continue to burn.

The exact causes of each fire are still under investigation. However, several factors have contributed to their rapid spread and intensity.

The seasonal Santa Ana winds are particularly strong this year, bringing low humidity, dry air and high wind speeds. Southern California has received less than 10% of its average rainfall since October 2024, creating dry conditions that make the area highly vulnerable to fire.

Unusually wet winters in both 2022-23 and 2023-24 led to increased vegetation growth, providing more fuel for the fires. This cycle of wet and dry extremes, known as “hydroclimate whiplash”, is part of the increasingly intense climate cycles caused by climate change.

Hydroclimate whiplash can occur virtually anywhere. These cycles can cause extreme wildfires, such as those in California, where rapid vegetation growth is followed by drying. They can also exacerbate flooding when unusually heavy rains hit the dry-baked ground, then run off over the land rather than seeping in, leading to flash flooding.

The human impact of hydroclimate whiplash

Rapid transitions between extreme wet and dry conditions have significant and wide-ranging impacts on people, a focus of my academic research, affecting everything from public health to economic stability and social equity.

As we have seen in California, there is the immediate impact of loss of life, property and livelihoods. We have also seen this during whiplash-induced floods and landslides, such as those experienced across California in 2023 and east Africa in 2024, when years of drought were followed by weeks of rain.

Fires exacerbate respiratory and cardiovascular diseases through their polluting smoke. Flooding creates conditions for waterborne illnesses such as cholera, leptospirosis or norovirus to rip through populations. Extreme swings in temperature can also create more heat-related illnesses, as human bodies struggle to adapt quickly. It is estimated that the health-related impacts of climate change will cost US$1.1 trillion by 2050.

But this number pails into insignificance against the projected US$12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide due to climate change by 2050. Critical infrastructure, including water supply systems, wastewater treatment plants and transportation networks, is at risk of damage or destruction. Food insecurity and scarcity will also increase during hydroclimate whiplash events.

“Wild Fires,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

And these impacts are not evenly distributed. While this month’s wildfires are affecting some of the richest communities in the US, it is generally low-income communities and vulnerable populations that are disproportionately affected, with limited resources to prepare for or recover from extreme events. Across the world, poorer populations are experiencing a 24%-48% increase in drought-to-downpour events, exacerbating their vulnerability and widening the health equity gap.

All these events and concerns also lead to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), resulting from displacement and trauma. Such human impacts are harder to measure, and often under-reported.

Adaptation and resilience

As climate change intensifies hydroclimate whiplash events, the human impacts are expected to grow more severe. Addressing these challenges will require coordinated efforts across multiple sectors, with a focus on both mitigation and adaptation strategies to protect human health, economic stability and social equity.

Governments and local authorities will need to implement co-management approaches for both drought and flood risks, alongside developing more flexible water management systems and infrastructure. Investing in natural infrastructure to enhance biodiversity and ecosystems will reduce risks to humans, both by restricting the effects of climate change and lowering the risks of fire and flooding.

As individuals we can often feel powerless, but environmental campaigns and movements have been highly successful in changing government policies. In the UK, the 2008 Climate Change Act and the net zero by 2050 legislation were the direct result of citizen lobbying and action, and the same can be said for numerous renewable energy transition policies around the world.

In California, we have seen the devastating effect of hydroclimate whiplash – and this won’t be the last we see. By calling on our governments to produce adaptation and resilience strategies that recognise climate change as a long-term human and economic risk factor, we can be more prepared for these events.

Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – The year 2024 was the world’s warmest on record globally, and the first calendar year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial levels.

The official declaration was made on Friday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s Earth observation program. It comes as wildfires continue to tear through Los Angeles, California – a disaster scientists say was made worse by climate change.

This record-breaking global heat is primarily driven by humanity’s ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The warming won’t stop until we reach net-zero emissions.

Clearly, the need for humanity to rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions has never been more urgent.

An exceptional year

The Copernicus findings are consistent with other leading global temperature datasets indicating 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850.

The global average temperature in 2024 was about 1.6°C above the average temperatures in the late-19th century (which is used to represent pre-industrial levels).

On July 22 last year, the daily global average temperature reached 17.16°C. This was a new record high.

Copernicus also found that each year in the last decade was one of the ten warmest on record. According to Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo:

We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5ºC level defined in the Paris Agreement and the average of the last two years is already above this level.

These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.

How scientists take Earth’s temperature

Estimating the global average surface temperature is no mean feat. The methods vary between organisations, but the overall picture is the same: 2024 was the world’s hottest year on record.

The high global average temperature of 2024 wouldn’t have been possible without humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. The El Niño climate driver also played a role in the first part of the year. It warmed Earth’s surface – particularly over a large swathe of the central and eastern Pacific – and increased global average surface temperature by up to 0.2°C.

What about Australia?

Copernicus found 2024 was the warmest year for all continents except Antarctica and Australasia.

But Australia is feeling the shift into a hotter, less hospitable climate, too. Last year was Australia’s second-hottest year on record, according to a declaration last week by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The hottest was 2019, when a blisteringly hot and dry spring led to the widespread bushfires of the Black Summer. Unlike 2019, Australia had a wetter than normal year in 2024.

However, 2024 was the hottest year on record for the southwest of Australia and parts of the centre and east of the continent.

Apart from April, Australia saw unusual warmth through all of 2024. August was the standout month for record-breaking heat.

In general, temperature records are broken more easily at the global scale than in individual regions. That’s because weather is more variable at the local level than on a global average. A period of, say, very cold weather in one part of a continent can bring down annual average temperatures there, preventing records from being broken.

That’s why Australia’s annual average temperatures have reached record highs three times since 2000 – in 2005, 2013 and 2019 – whereas the global average temperature set six new records in that period.

“Hot Earth,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

Does this mean the Paris Agreement has failed?

The global Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. So, if 2024 was about 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, you might think the world has failed to meet this goal. But it hasn’t, yet.

The success of the Paris Agreement will be measured against longer periods than temperatures over a year. That eliminates natural climate variability and factors such as El Niño and La Niña, to build a clearer picture of climate change.

However, the statistics for 2024 are certainly a bad sign. It shows humanity has its work cut out to keep global warming well below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C.

More heat guaranteed

There’s one very important thing to understand about climate change: the amount of greenhouse gases that humans emit over time is roughly proportional to the increase in global temperatures over that same period.

This near-linear relationship means every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity causes about the same amount of global warming. So, the faster we decarbonise the global economy, the sooner we can halt global warming and reduce its harms.

This year is unlikely to be quite as hot as 2024 because the El Niño has passed. But unfortunately, Earth will continue to experience record hot global temperatures for at least the next few decades.

This is all the more reason for humanity to move faster in decarbonising our society and economy. It’s not too late to shift the long-term trajectory of Earth’s climate.

Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne and David Karoly, Professor emeritus, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the experts quoted by Matt McGrath at the BBC point out, climate change certainly played a role in the destruction of Pacific Palisades and Altadena yesterday in Los Angeles, though its precise effect has yet to be calculated.

He cites the Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, Professor Stefan Doerr, saying, “While fires are common and natural in this region, California has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely climate change.”

Doerr goes on to caution that the precise contribution of human-caused climate change to yesterday’s conflagration has yet to be estimated. Still, the only question is how much our carbon dioxide and methane emissions turbocharged the wildfires, not whether they did. Was it by 10% or 30%? There is some indication it could have been by 40%! (See below).

Climate is long-term weather patterns. Weather is a one-off. A two-day downpour can be weather. A long-term increase in rainfall over previous averages would be climate change.

The ways in which weather contributed to the Los Angeles catastrophe are easier to specify. California had a twenty-year drought that ended two years ago. The plentiful rainfall since then caused a lot of shrubs and greenery to spring up. Then, this spring, summer and fall turned extremely dry. The December rains did not come. Usually there would have been 4 inches by early January. It was under an inch. That water would have tamped down the fire risk. Then, the Santa Ana winds blowing west through the mountains were unusually strong and hot, and hit places they usually missed.

“Blaze Stalks L.A.,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024.

But why has this year been so dry, creating abundant “fuel” for the wildfire demons?

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, pointed in a scientific paper to the way in which burning fossil fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has caused more frequent dry autumns, and caused them to be drier for longer. Since the Santa Ana winds hit in fall and winter, if the dry season is extended, it increasingly overlaps with the winds. That is a recipe for disaster, as we just saw. Swain cites another study of the years 1960 – 2019 showing that November has gotten consistently drier over the past 60 years. We saw that again this fall. But it wasn’t weather, since there is a clear pattern of desiccation in the 11th month. It is climate.

Worse, Swain thinks we may see more and more of this deadly overlap as humans heat up the earth.

He also cites studies showing that winter rains may be concentrated later in the year. You could have some showers in October in the old days, and November could be wet. Increasingly, those months are dry, and rains fall December through February, maybe especially January-February.

I’ve long noticed how much it rains in the Raymond Chandler mysteries set in Los Angeles. Except for February, I don’t remember it being that rainy, cool and miserable in L.A. At first I thought it was because Chandler was British and he was importing his weather imagery to southern California. But after reading Swain I wonder if the rain wasn’t just spread out more in the 1930s and 1940s, and whether there didn’t used to be more of it.

As for the percentage by which human-caused climate change has ramped up the dangers, we have a study that suggests a particular number. A 2022 paper by Linnia R. Hawkins et al. subjected the teens of this century to a computer study comparing the current likelihood of autumn wildfires in southern California, northern California and Oregon to what it would be without human-caused climate change. They found a 40% increase in the likelihood:

We show that while present-day anthropogenic climate change has . . . increased the likelihood of extreme fire weather indices by 40% in areas where recent autumn wind-driven fires have occurred in northern California and Oregon. The increase was primarily through increased autumn fuel aridity and warmer temperatures during dry wind events. These findings illustrate that anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating autumn fire weather extremes that contribute to high-impact catastrophic fires in populated regions of the western US.

The authors, however, cite literature that does not find a strong climate change effect for changes in the Santa Ana winds. It is possible that those 100-mile-an-hour gales hitting places they usually don’t, such as Altadena and Pasadena, were just weather. But combined with the shift of rains later in the year and the extra heat and aridity in the fall being driven by climate change, they proved deadly.

You will find very little, though, about the climate crisis or the fact that we are in uncharted territory with the release of carbon dioxide from the arctic tundra.  No longer a “carbon sink,” the arctic tundra shifts now to be a source of carbon dioxide thus auguring in a future of accelerated warming temperatures.  The parallel catastrophe to the growing likelihood of nuclear bombs being used, has been relegated to back page news.  Climate scientists can barely find an audience for their despairing pleas.

On Sunday January 18, 2025, from 12:15 to 3pm in the Second Congregational Church, an event in Franklin Country will lift us above this downward spiraling existential reality.  It is appropriately called Our Projects for 2025: Envisioning the World We Want.  Their efforts will bring together dozens of organizations, each with a singular mission but all epitomized as doing social and environmental good. The sponsors include Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, Western MA CODEPINK, the Interfaith Council, Amherst Young Feminist Party and more than twenty-five other participating cosponsors.  This coalition group aims to provide an alternative vision by creating a public conversation with community organizations ranging from peace and justice, reproductive rights, creative education and housing initiatives, to free food for those who need it, justice for the imprisoned and for civil and immigrant rights, as well as for climate action.

The program includes speakers; singalong music, with songs from local musicians; space to share information and meet with those who are dedicated to particular organization missions; and a simple lunch provided by those organizing the event.

The local event replicates the Peoples’ March (formerly Women’s March) in Washington DC and hundreds of others across the country held on the same day – each challenging the necropolitics of our times.  They aim to make the weekend of January 17-20 a weekend of Help Not Hate, as a way to honor Martin Luther King and show the politics of democracy, resistance to inequality and intolerance are ways to strengthen, not divide, our local communities.

What is striking about these gatherings is the organizers.  It is primarily women from diverse interests working at the community level to build a cohesive movement from the bottom up across the country.  They stand in contrast to the nearly 100 percent men at the top in our country that gain their cohesion from hostility. 

“March,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

Equally striking is the style of women at the community level and men at the top.  The women’s groups and other like-minded groups across the country have more firmly than ever resolved to organize in mass resistance to the anti-humanist, anti-feminist, anti-democratic in-your-face politics here in the US.  And that is why – no matter the obstacles we face, we have no time for despair.

Neither political party has shown any moral authority on Israel.  A Senate majority recently voted to approve $61 million in mortar rounds to Israel with only 19 democratic and 1 independent senator voting against the measure.  Bernie Sanders has finally called out the ruling class of American for what it is – an oligarchy, a government of a few with influence because of money, politics, and corporate and military power.  But it did not start with Trump – it was with us before Trump and is not only a Republican phenomenon.

If we are to have a future, and not crumble like the Roman Empire over time, the people must lead with their moral vision of a government uncorrupted by corporate influence and money with a deep and meaningful commitment to being the party of the people.  Most of the public do not feel they participate meaningfully in the political system.  “A meaningful democracy would give the public the lead role forming those decisions…reflecting everyone’s active participation and deliberation.”

The fate of the whole earth — of its trillions of life forms, including billions of humans — also took a turn for the worse. The World Meteorological Organization projected total global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2024 to be 41.6 billion tons. Some 37.4 billion of that was from humans burning petroleum, fossil gas, and coal. The rest was from deforestation. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years, though some of its ferocity was from the lingering cyclical El Niño that has now subsided.

Speaking of deforestation, NOAA is reporting the disturbing news that “After storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution.”

No, no, not that. The arctic tundra is starting to put out CO2? That is very disturbing news.

Here’s the bad news: In 2023, global carbon dioxide emissions came to 40.6 billion tons.

That means emissions increased in 2024. This is nine years after the Paris Conference, 27 years after the Kyoto protocol.

We know that carbon dioxide and methane cause global heating and that they are changing the climate in extremely dangerous ways. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by heat, aridification, and sea level rise. People will die. Whole animal species could be wiped out. Food shortages loom.

So there is no excuse for increasing our emissions, which for the most part means burning more coal, gas and oil. Why would you do that? Are you, like, insane?

Courtesy World Meteorological Organization

The UIAA reports on a study in The Cryosphere, “2024 data from 5,500 glaciers across the Andes show the mountains have lost 25% of their ice coverage since the Little Ice Age, and that their tropical glaciers are melting ten times faster than the cumulative global average.” The best case scenario is that they only lose another 25% of their mass over the next 75 years, but it could be as much as 50%. All that water will make its way into the seas and cause sea level rise.

All the hurricanes in 2024 were fiercer because of climate change, by 15-25 mph. That is, if a hurricane would have had 125 mph winds in the old days, it would have up to 150 mph winds today because the oceans are much hotter.

The US government is largely pro-carbon, continuing to subsidize petroleum and gas to the tune of billions. This, even though the United States is currently the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and by far the largest historically.

The US government is about to get even more pro-carbon. But the US government’s budget is $4 trillion a year, and the US GDP is $29 trillion, so the society far outweighs the government. We have to keep fighting against carbon. This is not an individual responsibility. We can only succeed by changing big structures — pressuring businesses and local and state communities. We can still make essential progress even with strong headwinds. And, every ton of carbon dioxide we don’t release into the atmosphere is a win for humanity over the next few centuries. And, look. Things are going to get hard. There will be severe challenges. But we can find ways to overcome them. If we act now.

It’s just past midnight in the cool, ancient forests of Tasmania. We’ve spent a long day and night surveying endangered Tasmanian devils. All around, small animals scurry through bushes. A devil calls in the darkness. Microbats swoop and swirl as a spotted-tailed quoll slips through the shadows. Working here is spine-tingling and electric.

Weeks later, we’re in a moonlit forest in Victoria. It was logged a few years earlier and burnt by bushfire a few decades before that. The old trees are gone. So too are the quolls, bats and moths that once dwelled in their hollows. Invasive blackberry chokes what remains. The silence is deafening, and devastating.

In our work as field biologists, we often desperately wish we saw a place before it was cleared, logged, burnt or overtaken by invasive species. Other times, we hold back tears as we read about the latest environmental catastrophe, overwhelmed by anger and frustration. Perhaps you know this feeling of grief?

The new year is a chance to reflect on the past and consider future possibilities. Perhaps we’ll sign up to the gym, spend more time with family, or – perish the thought – finally get to the dentist.

But let us also set a New Year’s resolution for nature. Let’s make a personal pledge to care for beetles and butterflies, rainforests and reefs, for ourselves, and for future generations. Because now, more than ever — when the natural world seems to be on the precipice — it’s not too late to be a catalyst for positive change.

A trail of destruction

Our work brings us up close to the beauty of nature. We trek through deserts, stumble through forests and trudge over snowy mountains to study and conserve Australia’s unique wildlife.

But we must also confront devastating destruction. The underlying purpose of our work – trying to save species before it is too late – is almost always heartbreaking. It is a race we cannot always win.

Since Europeans arrived in Australia, much of the country has become severely degraded.

Around 40% of our forests and 99% of grasslands have been cut down and cleared, and much of what remains is under threat. Thousands of ecological communities, plants and animal species are threatened with extinction.

Image by Danielle Shaw from Pixabay

And it seems the news only gets worse. The global average temperature for the past decade is the warmest on record, about 1.2°C above the pre-industrial average. Severe bushfires are more and more likely. Yet Australia’s federal government recently approved four coalmine expansions.

Australia remains a global logging and deforestation hotspot. We have the world’s worst record for mammal extinctions and lead the world in arresting climate and environment protesters.

To top it off, a recent study estimated more than 9,000 native Australian animals, mostly invertebrates, have gone extinct since European arrival. That’s between one and three species every week.

Many will never be formally listed, named or known. Is this how the world ends – not with a bang, but with a silent invertebrate apocalypse?

This destruction provokes ecological grief

The degradation of our environment affects more than distant plants and animals. It resonates deeply with many humans, too.

Ecological grief is an emotional response to environmental degradation and climate change, damaging our mental health and wellbeing. It can manifest as sadness, anxiety, despair or helplessness. Or it might bring a profound sense of guilt that we all, directly or indirectly, contribute to the problems facing the natural world.

Academic research on ecological grief is growing rapidly, but the concept has been around for decades.

In 1949, American writer and philosopher Aldo Leopold – widely considered the father of wildlife ecology and modern conservation – eloquently wrote in his book A Sand County Almanac that:

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

Ecological grief is certainly a heavy burden. But it can also be a catalyst for change.

Turning grief into action

So how do we unlock the transformative potential of ecological grief?

In our experience, it first helps to share our experience with colleagues, friends and family. It’s important to know others have similar feelings and that we are not alone.

Next, remember that it is not too late to act – passivity is the enemy of positive change. It’s vital to value and protect what remains, and restore what we can.

Taking action doesn’t just help nature, it’s also a powerful way to combat feelings of helplessness and grief. It might involve helping local wildlife, supporting environmental causes, reducing meat consumption, or – perhaps most importantly – lobbying political representatives to demand change.

Lastly, for environmental professionals such as us, celebrating wins – no matter how small – can help buoy us to fight another day.

We are encouraged by our proud memories of helping return the mainland eastern barred bandicoot to the wild. The species was declared extinct on mainland Australia in 2013. After more than three decades of conservation action, it was taken off the “extinct in the wild list” in 2021, a first for an Australian threatened species.

Australia’s forests have been razed since Europeans arrived. Pictured: cleared land near Dorrigo, New South Wales. The photo first appeared in The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser in September 1907. Trove

Our work to support mountain pygmy-possum populations after the Black Summer fires helped to ease our grief at the loss of so many forests, as did seeing the end of native forest logging in Victoria a year ago.

So, for our New Year’s resolution, let’s harness our ecological grief to bring about positive change. Let’s renew the fight to return those lost voices, and protect our remaining ancient ecosystems. We can, and must, do better – because so much depends on it.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally get to the dentist.

Darcy Watchorn, Threatened Species Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science Department, Zoos Victoria, and Visiting Scholar, School of Life & Environmental Science, Deakin University and Marissa Parrott, Senior Conservation Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science, Zoos Victoria, and Honorary Research Associate, BioSciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) -More than one-third of all animals on Earth, from beetles to cows to elephants, depend on plant-based diets. Plants are a low-calorie food source, so it can be challenging for animals to consume enough energy to meet their needs. Now climate change is reducing the nutritional value of some foods that plant eaters rely on.

Human activities are increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and raising global temperatures. As a result, many plants are growing faster across ecosystems worldwide.

Some studies suggest that this “greening of the Earth” could partially offset rising greenhouse gas emissions by storing more carbon in plants. However, there’s a trade-off: These fast-tracked plants can contain fewer nutrients per bite.

I’m an ecologist and work with colleagues to examine how nutrient dilution could affect species across the food web. Our focus is on responses in plant-feeding populations, from tiny grasshoppers to giant pandas.

We believe long-term changes in the nutritional value of plants may be an underappreciated cause of shrinking animal populations. These changes in plants aren’t visually evident, like rising seas. Nor are they sudden and imminent, like hurricanes or heat waves. But they can have important impacts over time.

Plant-eating animals may need more time to find and consume food if their usual meal becomes less nutritious, exposing themselves to greater risks from predators and other stresses in the process. Reduced nutritional values can also make animals less fit, reducing their ability to grow, reproduce and survive.

Rising carbon, falling nutrients

Research has already shown that climate change is causing nutrient dilution in human food crops. Declines in micronutrients, which play important roles in growth and health, are a particular concern: Long-term records of crop nutritional values have revealed declines in copper, magnesium, iron and zinc.

In particular, human deficiencies in iron, zinc and protein are expected to increase in the coming decades because of rising carbon dioxide levels. These declines are expected to have broad impacts on human health and even survival, with the strongest effects among populations that are highly dependent on rice and wheat, such as in East and Central Asia.

The nutritional value of livestock feed is also declining. Cattle spend a lot of time eating and often have a hard time finding enough protein to meet their needs. Protein concentrations are falling in grasses across rangelands around the world. This trend threatens both livestock and ranchers, reducing animals’ weight gains and costing producers money.

Nutrient dilution affects wild species too. Here are some examples.

Dependent on bamboo

Giant pandas are a threatened species with great cultural value. Because they reproduce at low rates and need large, connected swaths of bamboo as habitat, they are classified as a vulnerable species whose survival is threatened by land conversion for farming and development. Pandas also could become a poster animal for the threat of nutrient dilution.

The giant panda is considered an “umbrella species,” which means that conserving panda habitat benefits many other animals and plants that also live in bamboo groves. Famously, giant pandas are entirely dependent on bamboo and spend large portions of their days eating it. Now, rising temperatures are reducing bamboo’s nutritional value and making it harder for the plant to survive.

Mixed prospects for insects

Insects are essential members of the web of life that pollinate many flowering plants, serve as a food source for birds and animals, and perform other important ecological services. Around the world, many insect species are declining in developed areas, where their habitat has been converted to farms or cities, as well as in natural areas.

In zones that are less affected by human activity, evidence suggests that changes in plant chemistry may play a role in decreasing insect numbers.

Many insects are plant feeders that are likely to be affected by reduced plant nutritional value. Experiments have found that when carbon dioxide levels increase, insect populations decline, at least partly due to lower-quality food supplies.

Not all insect species are declining, however, and not all plant-feeding insects respond in the same way to nutrient dilution. Insects that chew leaves, such as grasshoppers and caterpillars, suffer the most negative effects, including reduced reproduction and smaller body sizes.

In contrast, locusts prefer carbon-rich plants, so rising carbon dioxide levels could cause increases in locust outbreaks. Some insects, including aphids and cicadas, feed on phloem – the living tissue inside plants that carries food made in the leaves to other parts of the plant – and may also benefit from carbon-rich plants.

Image by Maryse Rebaudo from Pixabay

Uneven impacts

Declines in plant food quality are most likely to affect places where nutrients already are scarce and animals struggle now to meet their nutritional needs. These zones include the ancient soils of Australia, along with tropical areas such as the Amazon and Congo basins. Nutrient dilution is also an issue in the open ocean, where rapidly warming waters are reducing the nutritional content of giant sea kelp.

Certain types of plant-feeding animals are likely to face greater declines because they need higher-quality food. Rodents, rabbits, koalas, horses, rhinoceroses and elephants are all hind-gut fermenters – animals that have simple, single-chambered stomachs and rely on microbes in their intestines to extract nutrients from high-fiber food.

These species need more nutrient-dense food than ruminants – grazers like cattle, sheep, goats and bison, with four-chambered stomachs that digest their food in stages. Smaller animals also typically require more nutrient-dense food than larger ones, because they have faster metabolisms and consume more energy per unit of body mass. Smaller animals also have shorter guts, so they can’t as easily extract all the nutrients from food.

More research is needed to understand what role nutrient dilution may be playing in declines of individual species, including experiments that artificially increase carbon dioxide levels and studies that monitor long-term changes in plant chemistry alongside animals in the field.

Over the longer term, it will be important to understand how nutrient dilution is altering entire food webs, including shifts in plant species and traits, effects on other animal groups such as predators, and changes in species interactions. Changes in plant nutritional value as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels could have far-reaching impacts throughout ecosystems worldwide.

Ellen Welti, Research Ecologist, Great Plains Science Program, Smithsonian Institution

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – Cyclone Chido was an “intense tropical cyclone”, equivalent to a category 4 hurricane in the Atlantic. It made landfall in Mayotte, a small island lying to the north-west of Madagascar on December 14, generating wind gusts approaching 155mph (250km/hr). Later on, it hit Mozambique, East Africa with the same ferocity.

This storm skirted north of Madagascar and affected the Comoros archipelago before making landfall in Mozambique. It is well within the range of what is expected for this part of the Indian Ocean. But this region has experienced an increase in the most intense tropical cyclones in recent years. This, alongside its occurrence so early in the season, can be linked to increases in ocean temperatures as a result of climate change.

News of the effects of tropical cyclone Chido in Mayotte, Mozambique and Malawi continues to emerge. Current estimates suggest 70% of Mayotte’s population have been affected, with over 50,000 homes in Mozambique partially or completely destroyed.

Ongoing conflict in Mozambique and undocumented migration to Mayotte will have played a key role in the number of deaths and the infrastructure damage.

Assessing how these cyclones characteristics are changing across southern Africa is part of the research we are involved in. Our team also studies how to build resilience to cyclones where conflict, displacement and migration magnify their effects.

A human-made disaster?

The risk that tropical cyclones pose to human life is exacerbated by socioeconomic issues. Migrants on Mayotte, many of whom made perilous journeys to escape conflict in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, now make up more than half of the island’s population.

Precarious housing and the undocumented status of many residents reportedly made the disaster more deadly, as people feared evacuation would lead them to the police. On islands with poor infrastructure such as Mayotte, there is often simply nowhere safe to go. It takes many days for the power network and drinking water supply to be restored.

The situation is particularly complex in Mozambique. The ongoing conflict and terrorist violence, coupled with cyclones, including Kenneth in 2019, has caused repeated evacuations and worsening living conditions. Cabo Delgado and Nampula in the far north of Mozambique, the provinces most affected by both Chido and the conflict, rank among the poorest and most densely populated in the country due to limited education, scarce livelihood options and an influx of people displaced by violence.

“Chido Strikes Maputo,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic / IbisPaint, 2024 based on photo by Mister Paps on Unsplash

As of June 2024, more than half a million people remained without permanent homes in the region, many living in displacement camps. That number is likely to rise significantly after Chido.

Compounding the crisis, Chido’s landfall so early in the cyclone season meant that the usual technical and financial preparations were not yet fully ramped up, with low stock levels delaying the timely delivery of aid. Unrest following elections in November hampered preparations further, cutting the flow of resources and personnel needed for anticipatory action and early response.

Tropical cyclones in a warmer world

Warmer sea surface temperatures not only provide more fuel for stronger storms, but may also expand the regions at risk of tropical cyclones.

The Indian Ocean is warming faster than the global average, and is experiencing a staggering increase in the proportion of storms reaching the intensity of Chido.

Climate simulations predict that storms will continue getting stronger as we further warm our world, and could even lead to an unprecedented landfall as far south as the Mozambican capital, Maputo.

Scientists carry out attribution studies to determine how climate change contributed to specific events. Scientists undertaking rapid attribution studies of Chido have found that the ocean surface temperatures along the path of the storm were 1.1°C warmer than they would have been without climate change. So, temperatures this warm were made more than 50 times more likely by climate change. Another study focusing on Chido itself concluded that the cyclone’s winds were 5% faster due to global heating caused by burning fossil fuels, enough to bump it from a category 3 to a category 4 storm.

Intense winds are not the only hazard. Scientists are confident that tropical cyclones will dump more rain as a result of climate change. A trend towards slower-moving storms has been observed, causing more of that rain to accumulate in a single location, resulting in floods.

Cyclone Freddy delivered a year’s worth of rain to southern Malawi in just four days in March 2023. Storm surges, exacerbated by sea level rise, also raise the scale of flooding, as in the devastating Cyclone Idai in March 2019. An increase in the number of storms that rapidly intensify, as Chido did before landfall in Mayotte has also been linked to climate change, which makes it harder to provide early warnings.

To improve resilience to future cyclones, conflict, migration and social dynamics must be considered alongside climate change, without this, displaced and migrant communities will continue to be the most affected by the risks that climate change poses.

Liz Stephens, Professor of Climate Risks and Resilience, University of Reading; Dan Green, PhD Candidate in African Climate Science, University of Bristol, and Luis Artur, Lecturer and Researcher of Disaster Risk Reduction, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.