ADAM ZYGLIS / BUFFALO NEWS BUFFALONEWS.COMBe ready for this: Claims that global warming has stopped because 2025 wasn’t as hot as 2024 or 2023. So stop worrying, climate change is over.
Wrong.
It is likely that 2025 will not be as hot as recent years. recent years. The current cool phase (La Nina) of the ENSO cycle will mean the overall global temperature will be somewhat cooler on average: As in one or two-tenths of a degree cooler than in recent years. So 1.4C or 1.35C.
A slightly cooler year in 2025 will still bring all kinds of extreme weather. (See America's Whipsaw Weather Future. How extreme weather is becoming extremely extreme.)
One important Need-to-Know is that the amount of heat trapped by our ever-accumulating carbon pollution will reach record highs. Over 90% of that heat will go into heating up the oceans, which are heating up 4 times faster than in the late 1980s.
Need-to-Know: A gobsmacking level of heat is building up in our oceans
The enormous amount of heat from the 41.6 billion metric tons of carbon pollution we added in 2024 will still be present in 2025. So will the heat from the trillion-odd tons of carbon that has been emitted over the past 150 years.
And we’ll add another 40 or 42 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon pollution in 2025.
All that heat is mostly hiding in the oceans, but it won’t stay there.
One zetajoule is equivalent to 10 times the world's electricity generation in 2020.So, while 2025 should be a bit cooler overall, in two or three years, or, if we’re lucky, 5 years from today, global temperatures will soar again. We’ll likely push close to 2C, bringing destructive levels of extreme weather no human has ever witnessed.
That said, if 2025 turns out to be hotter than 2024, it means some unknown climate element has kicked in. That could push us to 2C and higher far sooner than expected.
Need-to-Know: The physics of global warming is relentless
Global warming doesn’t care if we ignore it or pretend that it’s not happening. Or that we’re too busy with some important crisis or conflict to do anything about it.
Global warming doesn’t bargain or forgive.
Global warming is relentless.
We need to remember this.
Links
- ‘Unexpected’: January Breaks Temperature Record Globally, Startling Scientists
- 20 climate strategies insufficient to meet Paris Agreement goals
- Record-breaking heat likely to continue in 2025, accelerating climate change
- Global temperature is likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level temporarily in next 5 years
- 1.5°C: what it means and why it matters
- Global Warming of 1.5 ºC
- Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?
- January 2025 sets surprise record as hottest ever start to a year
- Ocean temperature rise accelerating as greenhouse gas levels keep rising
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