In two weeks it will be time again – then the climate summit will start in Baku, Azerbaijan. The world’s leaders will try to agree on how to tackle climate change and reduce emissions.
Just before the meeting, researchers and organizations usually take the opportunity to launch various types of climate reports and climate appeals, and this is also the case this year. Today alone, at least three different balls are in the air.
The Gulf Stream is beginning to fail
48 researchers led by Johan Rockström, professor of the Earth’s system boundaries at the University of Potsdam, have written an open letter to the governments of the Nordic countries, urging them not to underestimate the risk of the Gulf Stream shrinking sharply or collapsing.
There are already studies that have established that the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Circulation System), of which the Gulf Stream is a part, has become weaker in the last hundred years. Several climate models also predict that it will weaken even more during this century. A total collapse is so far unlikely, but looks like it could become imminent if global warming becomes more than four degrees.
Johan Rockström thinks that we should take this risk (even if it is small so far) more seriously because this more or less determines whether we will be able to stay in the Nordics at all.
– If there is research that says we cannot rule out a collapse, even within the next 100 years, then everything should be done to avoid it happening, he says to Dagens Nyheter.
Record high carbon dioxide levels
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is constantly increasing. The more we emit, the more it increases. And as we continue to increase emissions, the carbon dioxide content increases faster and faster. In the last 20 years, the levels have increased by ten percent.
IN the report published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) today also warns that the Earth’s forests and oceans will not be able to be as good carbon sinks as they have been so far.
Until now, nature has helped us against climate change. Our green lands have absorbed almost 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we emitted, and the oceans have sequestered approximately 25 percent. But heat and drought increase the number of forest fires and this means that the forests also begin to emit carbon dioxide, and a warmer ocean cannot absorb as much carbon dioxide.
This could lead to the carbon dioxide content increasing even faster in the future.
The level of carbon dioxide we have reached now, 0.42 percent, or 420 ppm, is at the same level as three to five million years ago. But then the temperature on earth was two to three degrees warmer, and the sea level 10-20 meters higher than today.
Larger areas uninhabitable
A report from Future Earth addresses that more and more areas on Earth will become uninhabitable as temperature and humidity increase. Right now, with a warming of barely 1.5 degrees, it is estimated that 10 percent of the world’s population is in the risk zone. If global warming reaches 2.5 degrees, it is about twice as many. And if we were to fail completely to reduce emissions and the temperature were to rise four degrees, then the curves in the report show that roughly half of the world’s population would have to move.
So what do these reports say about the situation on the planet, both in terms of politics and degree of climate seriousness?
Yes, the fact that the reports are coming now is a pretty clear sign that various organizations want to drum up interest before the climate meeting, make sure that the meeting gets attention so that the politicians get pressure to deliver an agreement that reduces climate change.
Climate-wise, it also appears clear that the roulette game about the health of the planet is taking place with ever higher stakes. Sure, the Gulf Stream probably won’t collapse. But I probably won’t crash either when I cycle home in Stockholm traffic. Still, I have a helmet.