Press Release from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) 10/14/2020 Biggest CO2 drop: Real-time data show Covid-19’s massive impact on global emissions While the ongoing Corona pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions – larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or even World War … Read more CO2 & Covid-19
Climate Change triggers migration – particularly in middle-income and agricultural countries Weather-related displacements from 2008 to 2015 totaled 172.3 million people. More than 14 million people were displaced by weather in 2015, with a record of 38.3 million set in 2010, an El Nino year. The annual average was 21.5 million people displaced by weather-related events. Chart courtesy of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC) and the Norwegian … Read more Climate Change triggers Migration
Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 23/03/2020 Coal exit benefits outweigh its costs Coal combustion is not only the single most important source of CO2, accounting for more than a third of global emissions, but also a major contributor to detrimental effects on public health and biodiversity. Yet, globally phasing out coal remains one of the hardest political nuts to crack. New computer simulations by … Read more Meanwhile, & despite the Virus, Global Warming Needs Action Too!
Thinking on these images from Mozambique, Zimbabwe & elsewhere I suddenly realize that what I had only dimly perceived or hadn’t wanted to believe was most likely true: the climate change deniers in power (or even those out of power or refusing to think on this for personal convenience) don’t do this simply out of a combination of obtuseness, stupidity, religiously motivated anti-science idiocy, and personal greed leading them … Read more The Endgame: Climate Change as Weapon
Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 31/01/2019 Extreme rainfall events in one city or region are connected to the same kind of events thousands of kilometers away, an international team of experts finds in a study now published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature. They discovered a global connection pattern of extreme rainfall – this could eventually improve weather forecasts and hence … Read more Rainfall extremes are connected across continents: Nature study
Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 31/01/2019The living lab experiment “Climate-Neutral Living in Berlin” takes stock: Everyone can contribute to climate stabilization, but without politics it won’t succeed “Climate-Neutral Living in Berlin” – for one year, more than 100 Berlin households have tried to shift to a more climate-friendly everyday life, from families with children, partners, flatmates to singles. In the living lab experiment headed … Read more The living lab experiment “Climate-Neutral Living in Berlin” takes stock
The UN climate summit COP24 in Katowice, Poland, closed; below PIK’s statement which I think is somewhat overoptimistic, remembering that the Paris agreement does not entail any compulsion toward change. COP24 President Michal Kurtyka’s celebration (cf. pix above) at the end of COP24 seems wildly out of proportion with what was actually achieved. On this issue, Johan Rockström, resilience scientist who as Director Designate is leading the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research together … Read more PIK on Climate Summit COP24 in Katowice
Messing with giant airstreams in the stratosphere. Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 22/11/2018 Over Thanksgiving, arctic air masses are predicted to bring record-cold temperatures and frigid winds to the Northeast of the United States. Driver for such winter weather extremes is often the stratospheric polar vortex, a band of fast moving winds 30 kilometers above the ground. In winter, when the polar vortex is … Read more Winter weather extremes in the US and Europe:
Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 01/11/2018 Extreme weather will likely become more frequent due to stalling of giant waves in the atmosphere • Computer simulations predict a strong increase of events in which the undulations of the jet stream in the atmosphere stop moving along. • This can favor more frequent extreme weather events on the ground. • Strong Arctic warming reduces the temperature … Read more Extreme Weather Likely To Become More Frequent
Joint Press Release by the Stockholm Resilience Center, University of Copenhagen, Australian National University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 07/08/2018 Keeping global warming to within 1.5-2°C may be more difficult than previously assessed. An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are … Read more Planet at risk of heading towards irreversible “Hothouse Earth” state
