Arctic News: Should people be told?

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Should people be told?

The image below, made with a screenshot from Berkeley Earth, shows an annual average temperature rise of 3°C or more in 2050 in China for each of the three scenarios looked at.

China is important, it has a large well-educated population and a large part of global emissions is released in China. Some countries face even more dire prospects. Have people been told how dire the situation is? The general lack of climate action around the world suggests that people have not been sufficiently informed. Moreover, many scientists, journalists, judges, politicians and civil servants bluntly refuse to inform people.

[ from earlier post ]

[ Top: Extreme risk impact, adapted from Planetary Solvency actuaries.org.uk (2025).
Bottom: 5.163°C rise, climatereanalyzer.org image, from earlier post ]

The image below shows the January 2025 temperature anomaly, compared to NASA's default 1951-1980 base.

The image below shows that monthly temperature anomalies have been more than 1.5°C above 1903-1924 (custom base, not pre-industrial) for 19 consecutive months (July 2023 through January 2025). The anomaly is rising rapidly, the red line (2-year Lowess Smoothing trend) points at a 2°C rise in 2026 (compared to 1903-1924, which - as said - is not pre-industrial).

Warnings about the potential for a huge rise in temperature have been sounded before, e.g. see the extinction page and the image below with daily data and added trends.

While La Niña conditions are definitely present in January 2025, the La Niña is expected to be short-lived. Temperatures are typically suppressed during La Niña. Despite temperatures being suppressed, the global surface air temperature reached 13.31°C on February 10, 2025, or 0.67°C above 1991-2020, according to ERA5 data. Temperatures keep rising, as indicated by the trends added to the data, despite La Niña. Will a new El Niño emerge in the course of 2025?

According to an earlier analysis, the 2°C above pre-industrial threshold may already have been crossed and we're moving toward 3°C at a pace that is accelerating, rather than slowing down. Once more, isn't it high time for people to be told how dire the situation is?

Climate Emergency Declaration

The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at this group.