Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the effects of another crisis looming on the horizon are already being felt throughout the world: climate change.
Temperature increases and more extreme weather events have been attributed to the environmental crisis, and according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 2020 is poised to be one of the hottest years in recorded history.
“Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record,” the WMO said. “2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015.”
The WMO, a United Nations agency that includes 193 member states and territories, published its provisional report on the State of the Global Climate in 2020 on Wednesday. The 38-page document painted a bleak picture for the environment now and in the years to come.
Ocean heat, the agency noted, is at record-high levels, and more than 80% of the world’s oceans experienced a marine heatwave at some point this year. Such temperature upticks have a domino effect, further harming marine ecosystems that are already suffering from waters that have become increasingly acidic due to carbon dioxide absorption.
“2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate,” WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas said a statement. “We saw new extreme temperatures on land, sea and especially in the Arctic. Wildfires consumed vast areas in Australia, Siberia, the U.S. West Coast and South America, sending plumes of smoke circumnavigating the globe.”
The smoke plumes Taalas mentioned billowed across the United States in mid-September, traveling from as far west as Oregon to as far east as Massachusetts, causing the sky in the commonwealth to take on a murky color for multiple days.
Hurricane season has also proven particularly detrimental this year. A record-breaking 30 named and 12 landfalling storms were reported in the continental United States in 2020, the most ever in recorded history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Although Massachusetts was not directly impacted by a hurricane this year, the commonwealth “will not always be so fortunate,” the state Emergency Management Agency tweeted last week. Other parts of the world were hit hard.
“We saw a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, including unprecedented back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes in Central America in November. Flooding in parts of Africa and South East Asia led to massive population displacement and undermined food security for millions,” Taalas said.
Massachusetts saw its warmest summer since modern temperature records began in 1850, the NOAA said. The state's average temperature from June to August was 71.2 degrees, the highest since 1949, which saw a 70.8-degree average temperature. What the commonwealth is experiencing appears to match global trends. Two-thousand-and-twenty is set to be one of the warmest years in recorded history. (NOAA)
The environmental impact on Massachusetts
Two-thousand-and-twenty, a year already characterized by significant global turmoil, was punctuated by extreme heat, wildfires and a record-breaking hurricane season, according to the WMO.
The United States, New England and Massachusetts more specifically were not exempt from the extreme environmental events of the past 11 months.
This year’s meteorological summer, which runs from June through the end of August, ranked as the nation’s fourth hottest and one of the driest in the historical record, according to the NOAA.
The Bay State, along with Connecticut and Rhode Island, saw their warmest summers since modern temperature records began in 1850, the NOAA noted in an August climate report.
Massachusetts’ average temperature from June to August was 71.2 degrees, the highest since 1949, which saw a 70.8-degree average temperature.
The agency claimed the month of August in particular will be remembered for its extreme heat and violent weather across the country.
The largest fires ever recorded in the U.S. occurred in late summer and autumn. Widespread droughts and extreme heat contributed to the blazes, making the July-to-September period the hottest and driest on record for the southwest.
On Aug. 16, Death Valley in California reached nearly 130 degrees, a startling figure and the highest known temperature in the world in at least the last 80 years, according to the WMO.
“The U.S. endured heat waves, hurricanes, a devastating derecho and raging wildfires out West,” the NOAA said. “Meteorological summer - June through August’s end - was a standout.”
Massachusetts, which has been experiencing significant dry conditions since mid-summer, is likely going to feel the impact of its ongoing statewide drought for at least the next year, experts say. The drought started in June and continues to impact more nearly 800,000 residents in the commonwealth, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
And the climate crisis is only going to make droughts more commonplace, David F. Boutt, a professor of hydrogeology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told MassLive in October. As environmental changes continue and potentially become more severe, moderate weather patterns may be replaced by more extreme ones, he said.
“What that means is the dry periods and the wet periods are going to get more intense,” said Boutt, whose work focuses on studying how soil, groundwater, water storage and vegetation are impacted by climate variability.
Two-thousand-and-twenty is set to be one of the warmest years in recorded history. This global map shows yearly temperature differences between 2020 and 1981 to 2010, indicating a warming trend. (World Meteorological Organization)
A rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases despite COVID-19 lockdowns
Five global temperature datasets all place 2020 as the second warmest year to date, following 2016 and ahead of 2019, the WMO noted.
“The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2 °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. There is at least a one in five chance of it temporarily exceeding 1.5 °C by 2024,” the agency’s secretary-general pointed out.
The WMO’s report, which is backed by contributions from dozens of international organizations and temperature data from January to October, lays out how high-impact weather events affected the lives of millions of people, sharpening human health, security and economic concerns already elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite lockdowns instituted in the wake of the public health crisis, which has led to a decrease in travel overall and a dramatic increase in people working from home, concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continued to rise in 2020, according to the WMO’s report.
The ongoing increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will have long-lasting consequences, the agency claimed, warming the planet for generations to come because of the extended lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The COVID-19 outbreak has added another layer of risk to evacuation, recovery and relief operations related to severe weather events as well, the WMO said.
“In the Philippines, for example, although over 180,000 people were preemptively evacuated ahead of Tropical Cyclone Vongfong (Ambo) in mid-May, the need for social distancing measures meant that residents could not be transported in large numbers and evacuation centers could only be used at half-capacity,” the agency’s report noted.
Citing data from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program of the U.N., the WMO said 50 million people have been hit twice in 2020: first by climate-related disasters and then by the coronavirus pandemic.
The number of undernourished people in the world increased in 2019. The shaded area on this graph represents projections for the longer period from 2019 to 2030. (World Meteorological Organization)
Looking to the future
Habitat and food insecurities, rising seas, increased ocean heat: What the environment may look like in the future is not a pretty portrait.
In the first half of 2020, roughly 10 million people were displaced, largely due to hydro-meteorological hazards and disasters, like droughts, floods and hurricanes, the WMO claimed.
Food insecurities have also been increasing, and they are expected to become only more problematic as climate change ensues.
Following decades of malnourishment decreasing, food insecurity has risen steadily in the past 7 years. In 2019, 687.8 million people were reportedly undernourished, compared to 628.9 million 5 years prior.
The WMO projected that by 2030, the number of undernourished people throughout the world will jump to 841.4 million, or what is estimated to be roughly 9.8% of the world’s population by that year.
The agency attributed the uptick in undernourish individuals to human conflicts and economic slowdowns as well as climate variability and extreme weather events.
“Nearly 690 million people, or 9% of the world population, were undernourished, and about 750 million experienced severe levels of food insecurity in 2019, according to the latest FAO data,” the WMO said. “The number of people classified under crisis, emergency and famine conditions had increased to almost 135 million people across 55 countries.”
Other negative environmental effects humans may see more regularly in the coming years include droughts, wildfires in forests and peatland areas, land degradation, sand and dust storms and air pollution, according to the WMO.
Such changes to the climate will have far-reaching implications for nature and wildlife, impacting marine systems as sea levels rise, oceans acidify, oxygen in the water decreases, mangroves decay and corals bleach, the agency said.
Ocean heat in 2019 was highest on record dating back to 1960, and there have been clear signals that the world’s waters have warmed significantly faster in recent decades. Those indicators are primarily rising seas and melting ice masses, the WMO claimed.
More than 90% of the excess energy in the climate system due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations are going into the ocean, causing a range of negative effects around the world, the agency pointed out.
“As with heatwaves on land, extreme heat can affect the near-surface layer of the oceans with a range of consequences for marine life and dependent communities,” the WMO noted.
How and if the world will be able to combat the ensuing threat of climate change is a big question mark.
According to International Monetary Fund, the global recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic makes it challenging to enact the policies to mitigate the threat of climate change, the WMO said.
However, the organization claimed, COVID-19 also presents opportunities to set the economy on a greener path to boost investment in green infrastructure, thus supporting GDP and employment during the recovery phase.
Policies aimed at improving resilience to the changing climate, like investing in disaster-proof infrastructure and early-warning systems, can limit the impact of weather-related shocks and help the economy recover faster once the pandemic winds down, according to the WMO’s report.
“Adaptation strategies play a key role in countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, such as low-income countries located in hot regions and areas exposed to more frequent or severe natural disaster risks,” the provisional report said.
The WMO’s final 2020 climate report will be published in March 2021, the agency said.
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