The Know Daily - Thursday 8 February 2024

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Not only are otters seriously adorable, but they’re also doing some very important conservation work in California’s marshland. This is down to their “voracious appetite” for striped shore crabs, which nibble away at the marshland, causing it to erode. Now, thanks to the otters’ constant grazing, scientists feel more hopeful about the future of the landscape.

🌍 A global warming warning

The past year has been the hottest on record, with new data showing that the global mean temperature for the past 12 months exceeded 1.5C for the first time in history. 

Tell me more. 
According to the EU’s climate service, the period from February 2023 to January 2024 experienced 1.52C of warming on average. 

This is in spite of more than 190 countries promising to try to limit the world’s long-term temperature rise to 1.5C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

What is the significance of the 1.5C figure?
Limiting the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C “is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts [of climate change]”, said BBC News climate reporter Mark Poynting. A 2018 UN report found that extreme weather and other climate impacts are more likely to occur at 2C of warming than at 1.5C.

Although this first year-long breach doesn’t constitute a breaking of the Paris Agreement (which refers to an average global temperature over a decade, rather than a 12-month period), “it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term”, added Poynting.

What are experts suggesting?
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, has called for “rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” - describing that as “the only way to stop global temperatures increasing”.

Some scientists have urged governments to act faster to cut CO2 emissions.

Is there any coming back from this?
Yes - there is definitely still reason for hope. As Sky News pointed out, although breaching 1.5C is “alarming”, it doesn’t mean the world has “permanently surpassed the threshold”. “The global average temperature would need to exceed 1.5C many more times before the climate can be said to have permanently warmed to that level,” the site added.

And, according to the BBC’s Poynting, many experts think that global warming will “more or less stop once zero carbon emissions are reached” - meaning that if countries act quickly, we can ultimately “still make a difference to the world’s warming trajectory”.