CLIMATE CHANGE STATE OF PLAY 2024: “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever. We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to cut fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.”

In a month where Australia is breaking the lowest seasonal temperature records in parts of Australia just weeks after setting maximum temperatures records in another seasonal extreme - while some countries in Europe are either experiencing heatwaves or wildfires at the same time others are experiencing heavy snowfalls or catastrophic flooding - it is no longer being whispered but shouted out that "global warming is now becoming so extreme and non-linear that combined with habitat destruction, pollution, and overkilling of species it threatens collapse in the natural world including human systems within years not decades" [Ben See, climate activist, September 2024].

This is happening because although for decades now global heating of the Earth system has been unequivocal, detected acceleration of Earth heating has never been so sharply evident as it has become in the last two years.

2024 is also the year when evidence suggests that the rapid increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere being recorded may now be independent of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere by human activity. In other words, global warming's effect on the Earth may have passed a tipping point from which there is no return to a pre-industrial era global climate for millennia.

16 September 2024:

"The global temperature according to NASA data. Anyone who is still wondering about #ExtremeWeather and flooding has either missed out on several decades of climate research or deliberately repressed it. #Flood" **

Click on graph to enlarge

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, (@rahmstorf) Head of Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research & Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University

** Text of tweet translated from German to English by Google Translate

U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), News Release, 6 June 2024:

During a year of extremes, carbon dioxide levels surge faster than ever

The two-year increase in Keeling Curve peak is the largest on record

June 6, 2024 — Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever — accelerating on a steep rise to levels far above any experienced during human existence, scientists from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced today....

From January through April, NOAA and Scripps scientists said CO2 concentrations increased more rapidly than they have in the first four months of any other year. The surge has come even as one highly regarded international report has found that fossil fuel emissions, the main driver of climate change, have plateaued in recent years.

“Over the past year, we’ve experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever. We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to cut fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.” ....