Monthly Archives: July 2023

PLEA Network

27 July 2023, NOAA: Has climate change already affected ENSO? This is a guest post by Mike McPhaden, who is a senior scientist at NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, WA. Mike has previously blogged with us and was lead editor of the book “El … Continue reading →

PLEA Network

18 July 2023, Climate Home News: Australia will update the ‘fantasy’ net zero plan it inherited. Australian climate and energy minister Chris Bowen has slammed his country’s official net zero plan – lodged by the previous Coalition government – as a “fantasy” as he announces plans to create sectoral decarbonisation plans. Bowen told the Australian Clean Energy Summit on Tuesday that he gad asked the Climate Change Authority to update Australia’s Net Zero 2050 plan and replace it with a new plan that lays out robust actions plans for the electricity, industry, building, transport, resources and land sectors. “As you know, Australia’s currently lodged 2050 plan is a fantasy, invented by the Morrison Government,” Bowen said. “It assumes future technologies will do the heavy lifting without any effort or investment to bring them about.” He said the new sector-by-sector decarbonisation plans would be crucial to laying out a pathway to net zero and to inform Australia’s 2035 emissions targets. But he rejected calls by the Greens – Australia’s green party – and numerous environmental groups to set a net zero target for 2035. Read more here

PLEA Network

12 July 2023, The Conversation: Global temperature rises in steps – here’s why we can expect a steep climb this year and next. Global warming took off in the mid-1970s when the rise in global mean surface temperature exceeded natural variability. … Continue reading →

PLEA Network

11 July 2023,  DW Global Media Forum:  Climate change in India: A growing environmental crisis. Intense monsoon rains have lashed parts of northern India over the past few days, leaving a trail of death and destruction, as well as rendering many areas inaccessible.  The state of Himachal Pradesh has been the hardest hit. Television footage showed landslides and flash floods, washing away vehicles, destroying buildings and ripping down bridges. According to the India Meteorological Department, torrential rains across the country in the first week of July have already produced about 2% more rainfall than normal. The agency has forecast more rain across large parts of northern India in the coming days. “The region, which is usually one of the driest, has received disproportionately high rains,” an department official told DW… 2022 extreme weather events. In 2022, the Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organization, tracked extreme weather events in India. It found out that India on the whole experienced extreme weather events on 314 out of the 365 days, meaning that at least one extreme weather event was reported in some part of India on each of these days.  The report concluded that these events caused more than 3,000 deaths in 2022, affected about 2 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of crop area, killed more than 69,000 animals used as livestock and destroyed roughly 420,000 houses. Read more here