The 26th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-26), scheduled to open on 10/31/21 in Glasgow, Scotland. COP brings wealthy and developing nations together to discuss fighting climate change as one entity. The conference for this year will attempt to finish the rules for the carbon market, not completed at COP 25. Any decisions made will have global authority.
The science of climate change will be front and center as a new observational study has found that just a tiny fraction of heating, 0.25 C, has pushed the planet extremes higher over the past decade.
Glasgow was Scotland’s industrial center in its glory days. The city is now attempting to lead on the green energy transition.
There will be a lot of headwinds for world leaders as natural gas prices surge just before winter (not expected to impact the US), and Chinese factories are shutting down to meet green energy goals while developing nations of the world’s factory floor struggle with the cost of energy.
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research writes:
"For extreme extremes, what we call 4-sigma-events that have been virtually absent before, we even see a roughly 1000-fold increase compared to the reference period. They affected about 3 percent of global land area in 2011-20 in any month," says lead-author Alexander Robinson from Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. "This confirms previous findings, yet with ever-increasing numbers. We are seeing extremes now which are virtually impossible without the influence of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels." The term 'sigma' refers to what scientists call a standard deviation.
For example, 2020 brought prolonged heat waves to both Siberia and Australia, contributing to the emergence of devastating wildfires in both regions. Both events led to the declaration of a local state of emergency. Temperatures at life-threatening levels have hit parts of the US and Canada in 2021, reaching almost 50°C. Globally, the record-breaking heat extremes increased most in tropical regions, since these normally have a low variability of monthly temperatures. As temperatures continue to rise, however, record-breaking heat will also become much more common in mid- and high-latitude regions.
Daily rainfall records have also increased. Compared to what would have to be expected in a climate without global warming, the number of wet records increased by about 30 percent. This implies that 1 in 4 records is attributable to human-caused climate change. The physics background to this is the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which states that air can hold 7 percent more moisture per degree Celsius of warming.
Importantly, already-dry regions such as western North America and South Africa have seen a reduction in rainfall records, while wet regions such as central and northern Europe have seen a strong increase. Generally, increasing rainfall extremes do not help to alleviate drought problems.
Come on Senator, be a hero, like Abby.