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“January 2025 sets surprise record as hottest ever start to a year…
“It was the hottest January on record at 1.75°C above the 1850 to 1900 average, beating the previous record set a year earlier… 2025 was expected to have marginally cooler temperatures thanks to the emergence of a La Niña climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean in late 2024.”
“NASA CERES update – the most important data in the world! [Leon Simons}
“A 2.0 W/m² increase of the (four-year average) Absorbed Solar Radiation over the Northern Hemisphere in 20 years!
“Net-flux increased by about 1.2 W/m², which means there is a lot more warming in the pipeline.”
https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/1886375586215460961
“Arctic sea-ice extent fell again yesterday and is now over 400,000 square kilometers below the previous record daily low for Feb. 2.
“The heat is on!” [global sea ice area has also just hit a record low for the date.]
https://bsky.app/profile/climatecasino.net/post/3lhbo3fu3ec2x
“Temperature has risen above freezing in one of the world’s northernmost station:
“Station Nord Greenland latitude 81:3; February record and warmest point in Greenland with a provisional +1.4C [34.5F]… Record warmest February day also in the extreme north of GREENLAND +0.6 Henrik Kroyer Holme.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1886030555298578528
“Greenland ice sheet cracking more rapidly than ever, study shows…
““The biggest thing I was surprised about was how fast this was happening. One previous study showed changes over the scale of decades … and now we’re showing this happening on scales of five years,” said Dr Tom Chudley…”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/03/greenland-ice-sheet-cracking-study
“HISTORIC ARCTIC WARMTH:
“Dozens of February records destroyed in ICELAND with up to 7C margin… SVALBARD: temps up to +5C; Ny Alesund MINIMUM +2.4C highest ever in February… HISTORIC first above freezing temperature (+0.1C Hayes Island) in February in the Franz Joseph Land… Records also in mainland RUSSIA…”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1886435355584590333
“Winter has gone from central and northern Europe…
“No more snow on the ground in Moscow for 15 days now and no more freezing for one week, even at night! January was + 3.5°C in Austria.”
https://x.com/subfossilguy/status/1885967940098392082
“Europe ‘can’t cope’ with extreme weather costs, warns insurance watchdog…
“More households will be unable to insure their homes and the mounting losses from natural disasters could destabilise banks, Petra Hielkema, chair of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, told the Financial Times.”
https://www.ft.com/content/32b588a7-b470-4012-8bc2-f9eea3f17902
“Are the French Alps facing increasing travel disruption?
“”Above 2,500 metres, there’s no doubt that global warming is making our mountains more fragile…” …A major road into the French Alps remains closed after a landslide, a train line has only just reopened after a 19-month closure and local authorities are warning of further problems ahead for transport in the mountains.”
https://www.thelocal.fr/20250203/are-the-french-alps-facing-increasing-travel-disruption
“Torrential downpours cause long traffic jams and travel chaos on Costa del Sol roads [Spain]…
“The downpour that took some Costa del Sol residents by surprise during the early morning rush hour this Monday is causing long traffic jams on the Costa del Sol’s road network.”
https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/water-the-road-causes-long-traffic-jams-20250203111357-nt.html
“Flooding in Sicily as month’s rain falls in four hours…
“Almost 150 millimetres of rain fell, overloading the drainage system, the municipality said in a statement, describing it as an “event of exceptional magnitude”.”
https://timesofmalta.com/article/watch-flooding-sicily-month-rain-falls-four-hours.1104604
“Lebanese farmers call for urgent action to address severe drought.
“In a remote field in southern Lebanon, 60-year-old farmer Salem Abdallah kneeled beside his cracked, dry soil, running his fingers through the dust. He looked up at the sky, searching for any sign of rain, but the clouds remained absent.”
https://english.news.cn/20250203/89ed40989c104aa8bc631e6bc7bd4600/c.html
“Water Authority says Israel experiencing driest winter in a century…
“Last month, the level of the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main freshwater repository, rose by only two centimeters (less than 0.8 of an inch), and the measured flow of the Jordan River was the lowest since 1960.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/water-authority-says-israel-experiencing-driest-winter-in-a-century/
“Severe Flooding Hits Korbous, Tunisia.
“Heavy rainfall has caused severe flooding in Korbous, Tunisia, submerging streets and disrupting daily life. Emergency teams are working to assist affected residents as water levels continue to rise.”
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/tunisia-severe-flooding-hits-korbous-tunisia/vi-AA1yhrzE
“Climate change puts African cocoa production under pressure…
“”Addressing the impact of climate change on cocoa requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. It affects every stage of the supply chain: farmers face reduced yields, businesses encounter rising costs, and consumers see higher prices”, says Paulina Asante.”
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-climate-african-cocoa-production-pressure.html
“Study examines how African farmers are adapting to mountain climate change…
“”Mountains are the sentinels of climate change,” said Julia Klein, a Colorado State University professor of ecosystem science and sustainability and co-author of the study. “Like the Arctic, some of the first extreme changes we’re seeing are happening in mountains, from glaciers melting to extreme events.””
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1072511
“Record heat again in MADAGASCAR.
“35.4 [95.7F] at Saint Marie is a new all time record for the station… INDIAN OCEAN RECORD HEAT. Mauritius and Reunion are with stifling, humid heat 24/7 with no end in sight. Tmins locally >28C. Today Tmin at Vacoas (Mauritius hill) was 24.4C, highest ever in February.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1886412957510459456
“Recent centennial drought on the Tibetan Plateau is outstanding within the past 3500 years…
“The recent drought conditions observed in central Europe and North America suggest that this may be part of wider hemispheric event, emphasizing the global reach of these teleconnections and the extensive influence of human-induced changes on the climate system.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56687-z
“Wildfire troubles Gaurishankar area, smoke hides snow-capped peaks [Nepal].
“The usual blanket of snow that covers the Rolwaling Mountain range in mid-January has been overshadowed by smoke from a wildfire in the Gaurishankar Conservation Area. Since Saturday, the fire has been raging…”
“Bangladesh seeing one of warmest winters.
“The coldest month January ended rather warm, with barely any cold wave days, setting this winter well on the trajectory to become one of the warmest in the country’s history… January was 99 per cent rain deficient as well, while December was 91 per cent rain deficient.”
https://www.newagebd.net/post/country/257027/bangladesh-sees-one-of-warmest-winters
“Thap Lan park closed until April because of forest fires [Thailand].
“Deputy provincial governor Suraphan Silpasuwan said on Monday the entire park was being closed for three months to clear the way for rangers and other agencies to fight forest fires.”
“EXTRAORDINARY HEAT IN SE ASIA – 38.7 [101.7F] Bua Chum THAILAND, one of the highest temperature ever recorded in all Asia so early.
“38.2 Chachoengsao Monthly record… February Highest minimums – PHILIPPINES: Cuyo 27.4; INDONESIA: 27.4 Jakarta, 27.1 Kupang, 25.8 Bengkulu, 26.3 Manokwari, 26.2 Ampenan.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1886380433946108000
“Record-breaking snowfall hits Hokkaido as cold front sweeps Japan.
“Heavy snowfall has persisted since Monday night, with Obihiro recording 120 centimeters in the 12 hours through noon on Tuesday, the highest on record for the city [and an all time national record for 12 hour snowfall].”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/04/japan/hokkaido-record-snow/
“A bridge connecting a key highway has collapsed from raging floodwaters in North Queensland as authorities issue a crocodile warning…
“‘We’re seeing record breaking rainfall in many locations,’ the Bureau of Meteorology’s Matt Collopy told reporters… Nearly one metre of rain was recorded at Paluma Dam, Townsville in the last 48 hours while Ingham has copped more than 400mm in the last day.”
“Extreme weather decimates Pilbara turtle hatchling populations [Western Australia]…
“Turtle hatchling numbers are significantly down in WA’s Pilbara region this season. Heavy rain from Tropical Cyclone Sean and hot temperatures have been cited as the main reasons.”
“Extreme heat in Australia:
“49.2°C [120.6F] Gascoyne Junction is all-time record & 7th highest temperature ever recorded in Australia in February! MONTHLY RECORDS: 47.8°C Paraburdoo, 47.2°C Wiluna, 47.1°C Telfer, 46.9°C Meekatharra [0.2°C from all-time record], 46.3°C Mount Magnet.”
https://x.com/ThierryGooseBC/status/1886629890122039307
“‘Fifty year storm’: Shock and awe as wild weather rocks Geelong [Victoria].
“Some are calling it the biggest storm to hit Geelong in more than five decades, as thousands pick up the pieces after one hell of a wild night.”
“Red alert in Litueche [Chile]: At least 150 hectares burned and 6 homes destroyed by forest fire.
“On Monday afternoon, a forest fire broke out in the commune of Litueche, in the O’Higgins region, an emergency for which Senapred declared a red alert.”
“Chile struggles to rebuild a year after its deadliest wildfires in history…
“Carlos Vidal is still shoveling rubble that used to be his home a year after the deadliest wildfires in Chile’s history tore through his neighborhood and the coastal cities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, killing 137 people.”
“One dead, hundreds evacuated as wildfires continue to burn in Patagonia…
“In total, 856 people have now been evacuated from mountain shelters close to El Bolson, while 123 others had contacted a helpline and informed the authorities they were leaving the area, said the regional administration.”
“SOUTH AMERICA HEAT WAVE:
“A new harsh heat wave kicked off between North Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Southern Brazil. Today 43.2C [109.8F] at Nueva Asuncion PARAGUAY, just 0.3C from the national record of highest temperature in February.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1885851654563774770
“‘It won’t come back’: Argentina farmers battle drought and a shrinking harvest…
“”We are seeing here corn that’s already gone. The plant is already yellow, it will not come back,” said the farmer from the town of Veinticinco de Mayo, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Buenos Aires. The town has been hit by a recent drought.”
“A strong hail and wind storm caused damage, flooded streets and power outages in Bahía Blanca [Atlantic Coast, Argentina].
“Bahía Blanca suffered a violent hail and wind storm on Sunday that left fallen trees, flooded streets and power outages in different neighborhoods. The phenomenon surprised residents after 3:20 p.m. , shortly after the National Meteorological Service (SMN) issued a last-minute alert.”
“Record heat hits the Texas panhandle…
“Amarillo reached 89 degrees just before 3PM Monday afternoon. This obliterated the old daily record high of 81 degrees set back in 1934. Not only was this a daily record high temperature, it also ties the monthly all-time warmest temperature for Amarillo since observations began in 1892.”
“How huge parts of the US could become uninhabitable within decades — even so-called ‘climate havens’…
“”Most major infrastructure systems in the United States were deployed right around the middle of the last century. Well, you know, here we are, it’s 2025, and they’ve gone through their initial lifespans. We’ve Band-Aided them together for another 20 or so years, and we just can’t keep Band-Aiding them anymore…””
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-cities-unlivable-climate-change-b2687239.html
“State Farm seeks emergency 22% rate hike in California after LA wildfires…
“State Farm General, California’s largest home insurer, is seeking an emergency rate increase for homeowners following the Los Angeles wildfires last month. If approved, the hike would average a 22% increase for policyholders.”
“California Faces Mudslide Threat From Flooding Rains After Wildfires…
“…a massive Pacific storm will start to move south into Los Angeles on Tuesday, where it can transform burned hillsides into rivers of mud and debris. Rain has already started in San Luis Obispo…”
“North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures have continuously been running above pre-2023 records for 700 days now!
“Global Sea Surface Temperatures are about to reach 23 months above pre-2023 records!”
https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/1886487680181223748
“Children ‘gripped by climate change anxiety’…
““Eco-anxiety” affects almost four in five children under 12, research suggests. New polling commissioned by Greenpeace has found teachers are unable to cope with the unprecedented number of pupils who report feeling worried about climate change.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/03/children-gripped-by-climate-change-anxiety/
“Solar geoengineering, if weaponised, has the potential to deepen global inequality and escalate conflicts worldwide…
“”The complete risks of eventual SRM deployment are unknowable, and there are at present no plausible global governance mechanisms to deal with such planetary-scale intervention technologies.”
https://theecologist.org/2025/feb/04/weaponising-solar-geoengineering
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You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. I’ll be back tomorrow with an “Economic” thread.
Truly the nightmare world.
Doom Wizard has the straight dope again, as usual, but let’s give some context to this.
Yeah, all the evil idiots and power–hungry business morons are in place now to generate a faster-than expected reckoning.
However, there is some context to this. A resolute, deeply informed r/collapse commenter named “Wave of Anal Fury” has repeatedly stressed the overwhelming retail fact – the US, the world’s number 1 consumer of species-killing oil, just set a new Baby Jesus-birth-period retail record of $1 trillion dollars in sales.
Degrowth what? Limits to who? “Stable new order” – you kidding me? Green huh? Say what, people?
“Wave of Anal Fury.”
Sounds like a Bruce Lee movie, Martin. If he had dysentery.
US consumption may be going strong but the debt-mountain propping it up is creaking:
“Americans are not OK financially, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve…
“”These credit card data are showing warning signs of consumer stress,” said Andrew Kish, assistant vice president in the Financial Monitoring Group of the Philly Fed.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2025/01/26/economic-warning-behind-credit-cards-financial-stress/77887274007/
Doom, let’s take it all in with perspective.
I just watched this British Gal on public television, Lucy Worsley Investigates.
First time and it was about the great pandemic of 1348 that came to England from across the channel via trade ships.
Now, that was a nightmare world for those folks; many communities had half of the population die off from it and of course the clergy all attributed to being sinful….
Just about anything “fun” was deemed sinful….and naturally fooling around with the ladies was tops on the list…never mind having illegitimate babies, which happened a lot it seems.
Anyway, the upper crust complained about the shortage of help and servants and the increase in wages for them.
They even passed a law to freeze the people in place with the same scale pay.
Of course, that didn’t play out too well.
She even spoke of agriculture and how they endured extreme weather events with the different varieties of crops that just rotted in the fields and families went hungry, but still owed the Lord his rent….
So, if we are tapping on the computer our world is pretty good…
Yes, for many on the planet today it’s like the Middle Ages and it’s a nightmare.
Vince, that is a good reminder that life never comes with any guarantees and that, in historic terms, most of us are still living lives of amazing comfort and convenience.
Of course, it’s not always easy to bring that sort of perspective into one’s day-to-day, 21st Century life, which can still be – let’s face it – pretty damn stressful, frustrating, upsetting… We can but try!
Doom Wizard, it is trending inexorably in that direction, I’m afraid.
The average twelve month average Mauna Loa CO2 increase through January was 3.6ppm, the highest recorded. Usually the rate goes down after an El Nino, I think. This might be another piece of evidence for ocean stratification as the surface layer gets saturated and cannot move the CO2 molecules to deeper water (it’s actually harder than for heat energy). Things get worse if the water is also warming and eventually it may even start outgassing rather than just being a poorer sink.
George, yes, CO2 should decline post El-Nino…
I’m sure most long-term visitors to the site will have found it less surprising than the author of the OP that La Nina has not brought cooling, given that we saw a surge of unexplained heat well before El Nino got underway in NH summer 2023.
It looks like Arctic and global ice extents are going to continue to set new record daily lows by quite large margins. The Barents Sea stays above zero for at least another ten days and with some high winds while a few remaining bits of thin ice in the Antarctic are disappearing.
The next German election is going to be a real cliff hanger for me. The Linken (Leftists) and the Sara Wagenknecht Party are both hovering around the 5% cut off level. Maybe both parties will make it Maybe neither party will make it. it would be bad enough that only one of the two parties gets in. That would represent a 50% reduction of the left side of the politcal spectrem in Germany. It would be a real shame if both parties do not get in. That would be like disinfrancicing the entire left. Then if both parties get in they will only be getting what they deserve about 10% of the members of the Bundestag for about 10% of the vote.
If they both get in nothing will change as Germany has 5 extreme right wing parasite parties and only two left wing parties. But this is my version of the World Cup or Super Bowl. The election gives me some to cheer for in the very short term future.
It would be an interesting developement if the AFD would emerge as the largest party. At least they (the AFD leaders) want to end assistance to Elensky and his brainwashed minions in Ukraine.
Curt, it’s amazing how far and fast Germany has fallen – from an economic powerhouse posting annual GDP growth of 4.10% in 2010 to the “sick man of Europe”, heading for three years of declining growth for the first time since reunification.
From 2014: So even as the society that is being built around us requires of us the maximization of individual consumption abetted by an ever-changing electronic landscape requiring ever greater investment in never-ending upgrades and ever-increasing costs for security from pirating, theft and collusion among ISP’s, software, firmware and hardware companies, while on-line ‘stores’ destroy off-line shops, it has shown no ability or willingness to make any long-term investments in the skills, education, knowledge or infrastructure of the landscape around it, and is determined, as Apple so recently demonstrated (with their tax payment of 0, da nada, nil), to make sure that governments haven’t the revenue base to do so either.
The Musk-a-telles are the denouement of Silly-con Valley’s Libertarian Rand-iness and e-Galt-Aryanism. AI, like the internet that spawned it, like the military industrial complex that developed them both, will devour everything until there is no home … no country … no world. Just gaze at Gaza.
Check out my Robo-cop illustration: (inspired by one of my 3’rd grade students at the time)
https://robertlowrey.blogspot.com/2014/07/capitalism-creative-destruction-so-why.html
Rob, very nice. At first I thought it would take inspiration from the brutal Paul Verhoeven film, but then I re-read your comment and realised that a 3rd grade student is unlikely to have seen it. 😂
“The robotification of war…” It is a prescient article. We’re moving onto an alarming new chapter of that now with autonomous robots entering the fray:
“As the war between Russia and Ukraine grinds on, a new era of warfare is emerging—one that is increasingly dominated by autonomous systems, artificial intelligence (AI), and drone swarms.”
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/ukraine-drone-swarms-redefine-warfare/
“the military industrial complex”, Them’s fighting words & we might make a few bucks out of the next row. 😉
“Might” you say TR, what you really mean is “might is right” ….at least up to now that is….thanks for chiming in TR…Gail Tverburger has a new one out there…something about Southeast Asia being last drunk standing…not that Fast Eddie did the prepper stops there already and gave up..Of course, no worry about CC in her sphere of concern…whatever