After the puzzling warmth of Earth in 2023 and 2024, what could 2025 have in store?
According to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit climate analysis organization, the global average temperature was 1.33 C above the pre-industrial average in the month of May, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) found that the monthly average was 1.40 C above the pre-industrial average. (Climate agencies around the world use different methods to analyze global temperatures, hence the difference).
While that may seem like good news, the fact is that 2025 is still on track to be one of the top three warmest years on record, according to Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth.
"With El Niño being firmly over, it is very unlikely at this point that 2025 is going to set a new record, but I still think it's the odds-on favourite to be the second-warmest on record, and it is virtually certain to be a top three warmest year," Hausfather said.
El Niño, a natural, cyclical warming in a region of the Pacific Ocean that, coupled with the atmosphere, can cause global temperatures to rise, began in the middle of 2023 and then peaked in 2024, which could account for some of the record warmth that puzzled climate scientists.
What was particularly interesting about the month of May is that land surface temperatures dropped quite a bit compared to the months prior. However, it was still the second warmest on record, after 2024.
Hausfather said the sharp drop could have been some "internal variability" that had kept the land surface temperatures elevated and that perhaps last month was a result of the end of that variability.
An important thing to also keep in mind when it comes to what we can expect in terms of 2025 making the record books, winter is when we see the greatest temperature anomalies, Hausfather said. So that could push 2025 even higher than what we're seeing now.
On the road to warming trend of 1.5 C
Ocean temperatures have decreased in part due the end of El Niño, but remain near record highs. In May, the average ocean temperatures were 0.99 C above the 1850-1900 average, according to Berkeley Earth.
"At the moment, we are seeing, or we have just seen, a significant ocean heat wave in the North Atlantic," said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
"[Ocean temperatures are] cooler than last year and the previous one, but it's warmer than any other years we have in the record. So this is one of these things where it depends [whether] we like to see the glass half full or half empty. It's still a very warm ocean."
Though Earth did hit a 12-month average of 1.5 C, that doesn't necessarily mean failure on the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below a threshold of 1.5 C. That would have to happen over a longer period, though there is no set timeframe set out in the agreement. Climate is looked at over long periods, typically spanning 20 or 30 years.
Carbon budget running out
However, a study published on Wednesday in the journal Earth System Science Data, found that — if emissions continue at 2024 rates — we have only three years until we exhaust our carbon budget to keep warming below that 1.5 C threshold.
"Record-high greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly narrowing the chance of limiting warming to 1.5 C," Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and co-author of the report, said in a statement.
"The window to stay within 1.5°C is rapidly closing. Global warming is already affecting the lives of billions of people around the world."
Though the that threshold may be breached, climate scientists like to stress that every tenth of a degree matters.
But to keep warming below 2 C — the threshold initially set by the Paris Agreement — there needs to be a concerted effort to drastically cut CO2 emissions, as Antonio Gutteres, secretary-general of the United Nations, has continually stressed.
Buontempo said that he's hopeful that the tools we have today will at least help us deal with dealing with the outcomes of rising temperatures.
"I'm an optimist. I've always been an optimist, and my feeling is that, you know, there are plenty of positives in this terrible situation, including the fact that we never had so much information about our planet," Buontempo said.
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CTV News
12 hours ago
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CBC
a day ago
- CBC
As Canada's thickest glaciers melt, Yukon First Nations wonder what will happen if they disappear
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"Even looking out my window in Haines Junction there's a small glacier on the mountains just in front of me — and some of those are disappearing pretty directly," he said. For generations, glaciers in the St. Elias mountain range have shaped the lives of the First Nations people that lived next to them, but human activity is also changing the glaciers. Today, those glaciers are melting at rapid rates due to climate change and local First Nations have been left wondering what their future could look like if the glaciers disappear. For two weeks this July, researchers stayed at the Kluane Lake Research Station on the outskirts of Kluane National Park to study how the glaciers are changing as they melt. Luke Copland, a professor at the University of Ottawa, has been studying these glaciers for almost 20 years. He says he's watched some of them get smaller and smaller each year. "The big ones will be around for a long time — many, many centuries into the future. 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And so I'm like, this won't happen in my lifetime, but at some point, if that all melts out, there's a whole other world." Local melting has global ramifications Local communities may be most directly affected by melting glaciers in the St. Elias mountain range, but as these massive icefields melt, researchers say the impacts could be felt around the world. "Globally, about one quarter of all melt coming from glaciers and ice caps – so this excludes ice sheets – is coming from the mountains in this area," said Copland. For Copland and other researchers, a priority now is to take long-term measurements and document what's happening locally, and then apply that to understanding the bigger picture. "The message is that the glaciers are important to everything, locally and globally," Copland said. For Johnson, Chambers and Fingland, it's also about telling others why the glaciers matter. "It's important for glaciologists to come in, understand the stories, understand the landscape, and build that relationship with the Southern Tutchone people and those of us that reside here," Johnson said.
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
Concordia team develops solar-powered Minecraft-style game with eco heart
A trio of Concordia University designers in Montreal developed a solar-powered, Minecraft-style video game with an environmental message. Some Concordia University researchers in Montreal have come up with a video game about fighting climate change - and it's solar-powered. It's a modification of 'Minecraft' where players can build a better world. 'The Enigma of Gaia' is a multiplayer survival game that uses the Minecraft platform. Rosie McDonald is on the team that's been working on this for more than a year. 'We made mods to the game that include pollution,' she said. 'We've added temperature and thirst, we've added devastating storms that destroy the landscape, and so that's not in regular Minecraft. It's a lot harder to play this way, but it gets players to think very differently.' Developers of new game Muhammad Shahrom Ali, Quinn Saggio and Rosie McDonald are developers of the Minecraft-style game "enigma of Gaia," a solar-powered adventure. (Christine Long/CTV News) Challenges include rebuilding after a climate catastrophe in a Minecraft world. 'A tornado passes and then it just eviscerates the land,' said building team member Quinn Saggio. 'It takes away the dirt, the grass, the trees, the leaves, everything. It makes splotches. You have to jump to where you want to go. It makes traversal extremely hard.' Enigma of Gaia Enigma of Gaia is a new game developed from the Minecraft world. (Christine Long/ CTV News) This game is named after Mother Earth, so it's powered in an environmentally friendly way. 'This experiment is what does the world look like where solar power is ubiquitous?' said creative partner Muhammad Sharhrom Ali. 'More specifically, what does gaming look like in that world? And to experiment with that, we need to build the infrastructure.' Three solar panels on the roof of the Concordia EV Building are connected directly to a solar controller and a battery that is then powering a mini PC that is used as a server. Solar panles The game Enigma of Gaia is powered by solar panels. (Christine Long / CTV News) 'If one person is playing in a power-expensive manner, then everybody suffers,' said Ali. 'So when you create these conditions, people have to play in a more mindful way.' 'It's not something you can play whenever you want; it's dictated by the sun and the clouds,' said Saggio. The solar power levels fluctuate and are shown onscreen during gameplay in real time, encouraging more collaborative play. 'There's a lot of consideration and thought put into play that would otherwise be mindless,' said McDonald.
