Earth passed a feared global warming milestone Friday, at least briefly

The planet marked an ominous milestone Friday: The first day global warmth crossed a threshold, if only briefly, that climate scientists have warned could have calamitous consequences. Preliminary data show global temperatures averaged more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above a historic norm, from a time before humans started consuming fossil fuels and emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. That does not mean efforts to limit global warming have failed — yet. Temperatures would have to surpass the 2-degree benchmark for months and years at a time before scientists consider it breached. But it’s a striking reminder that the climate is moving into uncharted territory. Friday marked the first time that everyday fluctuations around global temperature norms, which have been steadily increasing for decades, swung the planet beyond the dangerous threshold. It occurs after months of record warmth that have stunned many scientists, defying some expectations of how quickly temperatures would accelerate this year. “I think while we should not read too much into a single day above 2C (or 1.5C for that matter) it’s a startling sign nonetheless of the level of extreme global temperatures we are experiencing in 2023,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Stripe and Berkeley Earth, said in a message to The Washington Post. Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said Sunday on the social media platform X that Friday’s global temperatures were 1.17C (2.1F) above the 1991-2020 average, a record-setting margin. Given how much human-caused warming had occurred by that period, that means Friday’s average global temperature was 2.06C (3.7F) above a preindustrial reference period, 1850-1900, she said.

Is it finally time for the world to take climate change seriously?

ROUND 2C, MATCH 8 OUT OF 8!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

The Cheetah Girls:

[No Propaganda Submitted]

Harper:

Despite this being a very late-series Wizards episodes, it is one of the most iconic ones in my brain. I don't know why. Anyway I love Harper underrated character.

The way the Wizards of Waverly Place told the story is so fucking funny. Harper wants to read the story of Cinderella to a bunch of orphans, but makes the mistake of reading through Alex's magic storybook, which drags her into the story of Cinderella. As Cinderella. The story blends into the Three Little Pigs because Alex rips pages out her books to make it shorter and Mason the Werewolf is the big bad wolf coming to eat Justin, Max and Zeke with pig noses. Somewhere along the way David Hasselhoff and a caveman appear in an attempt to fix the story. And at the end Harper yells at a bunch of kids :D

How about Zeke in 2c 😳👀

Pastel bloggers hate him

Check out this listing I just found on Poshmark: Sophia + Zeke blush color lace cold shoulder dress.

On top of everything else, 2020 has tied for the hottest year on record

https://sciencespies.com/environment/on-top-of-everything-else-2020-has-tied-for-the-hottest-year-on-record/

On top of everything else, 2020 has tied for the hottest year on record

2020 has tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring service said Friday, keeping Earth on a global warming fast track that could devastate large swathes of humanity.

The six years since 2015 are the six warmest ever registered, as are 20 of the last 21, evidence of a persistent and deepening trend, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.

Last year’s record high – a soaring 1.25 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – was all the more alarming because it came without the help of a periodic natural weather event known as an El Nino, which added up to two-tenths of a degree to the 2016 average, according NASA and Britain’s Met Office.

“It is quite clear that in the absence of El Nino and La Nina impacts on year-to-year temperatures, 2020 would be the warmest year on record,” Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, California, told AFP.

During an El Nino, which occurs every two to seven years, warm surface water in the tropical Pacific Ocean can boost global temperatures. La Ninas – such as one currently underway – have the opposite cooling effect.

“2020 stands out for its exceptional warmth,” said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.

“This is yet another reminder of the urgency of ambitious emissions reductions to prevent adverse climate impacts in the future.”

In 2015, the world’s nations vowed to cap global warming “well below” 2C, and 1.5C if possible.

A subsequent report from the UN’s climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, left no doubt that 1.5C was the safer threshold.

With just over 1C of warming so far, the world has seen a crescendo of deadly droughts, heatwaves, flood-inducing rainfall, and superstorms made more destructive by rising seas.

2020 witnessed a record number, for example, of hurricanes in the Atlantic – so many that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ran out of letters in the alphabet to name them.

‘Shut off the tap’

Some regions last year experienced warming well beyond the global average, according the Copernicus report, based largely on satellite data.

Europe’s average surface temperature across 2020 was a searing 2.2C over the pre-industrial benchmark – and nearly half a degree above 2019, the previous record year.

Warming in the Arctic region was even more spectacular, with northern Siberia and parts of the Arctic itself nearly 7C above mid-19th century levels.

Wildfires across Siberia lasting well into the autumn released a record quarter billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual emissions of Spain, Egypt or Vietnam, and a third more than in 2019, the previous record year.

CO2 levels in Earth’s atmosphere peaked at 413 parts per million, nearly 50 percent more than in the early 18th century, before fossil fuel burning began to load the skies with heat-trapping greenhouse gases, C3S reported.

These unprecedented levels were reached despite a seven percent drop in emissions due to pandemic lockdowns.

“Since CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere like water in a bathtub, if we turn down the tap by seven percent, the CO2 level just rises a bit more slowly,” Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told AFP.

“We need to shut off the tap to get a stable climate again.”

Global emissions were on a steady upward trend through 2019, and it remains unclear whether humanity will return to “business as usual” or begin to ratchet down carbon pollution quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

Even if all nations fullfil pledges submitted in annex to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the planet would still heat up more than 3C by century’s end.

“The world has been warming at a steady rate of around 0.2C per decade since the 1970s due to human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases,” noted Hausfather.

“If we continue at our current rate we will pass 1.5C in the mid-2030s.”

© Agence France-Presse

#Environment

Hipster Zeke in 2C 👀

My n°1 struggle when drawing is coming up with a pose or finding a reference that I feel it’s good enough for what I’m trying to do and I wasn’t sure what to do for this one but then I saw on my dash a mirror selfie of Daniel Howel wearing a Winnie The Pooh onesie and I said to myself that’s the one, and so this happened.

2C Zeke for Blushies!

I…. Somehow accidentally made this a chibi? But it fits him?? 

Young Grisha in 2c? Reminds me of him yelling at kid Zeke lol

Added a little 10d Zeke for Grisha to be disappointed at.