Latest news with #IntergovernmentalPanelonClimateChange
Techday NZ
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Techday NZ
Sony brings climate change education to PlayStation 5 & VR2
Sony Interactive Entertainment has launched Climate Station, an application designed to enhance understanding of climate change, now available for free on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2. This initiative forms part of Sony Interactive Entertainment's wider commitment to the Playing for the Planet Alliance, which unites members of the gaming industry in working towards sustainability objectives, as initially presented at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019. Climate Station invites users to delve into complex climate data through interactive and immersive technologies. The application features three primary modules: Weather Year, Observations, and Projections, as well as an Explainer Library. Application features Weather Year offers a visual journey through the meteorological events of 2019, highlighting the interconnected weather systems of Earth. Observations deliver access to 120 years of climate data, referencing temperature records from thousands of locations to illustrate long-term warming trends. Projections utilise data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-approved models, enabling users to examine the impact of various future scenarios on the global climate up to the end of the 21st century. The Explainer Library complements these experiences with 90 minutes of multimedia content dedicated to clarifying the science underpinning climate change. This approach is designed to address the challenge of presenting scientific data in a way that is engaging for users of all ages. Data within Climate Station draws upon a range of expert sources, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Berkeley Earth, the Climate Research Unit, and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Expert involvement Veteran meteorologist Laura Tobin contributed as a consultant and narrator for the project. Discussing her involvement, she said: "As a meteorologist, I report on weather and climate and over the last 20 years I've seen the increased frequency and intensity of severe weather around the world. More and more records are being broken, often in remote parts of the globe but in recent years it's hitting closer to home. I'm immensely proud of our collaboration on Climate Station. We want audiences to learn more about our amazing planet, use the latest science to see what is really happening, and finally have a greater understanding and appreciation of why change is needed." Climate Station can be used in both private homes and educational or research contexts. The interactive nature of the application aims to make complex datasets more accessible and easier to understand for a broad audience. Kieren Mayers, Vice President of Environmental, Social, and Governance at Sony Interactive Entertainment, stated that the company's work with the Playing for the Planet Alliance and ongoing environmental commitments underpin this release. SIE continues to pursue the Road to Zero plan, targeting net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, and improving the energy efficiency of its hardware and data centres. Susan Gardner, Director of the Ecosystems Division at the United Nations Environment Programme, welcomed the launch, commenting: "Bringing climate awareness into the homes of millions through gaming will help build both knowledge and action to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. The approach to adapt the science into a game format has been impressive. We look forward to seeing how players react to this new tool and also recognise the leadership of Sony Interactive Entertainment in bringing climate science to consoles across the planet." Educational focus Information from the IGEA NZ Plays (2023) report indicates a growing interest among New Zealanders in using gaming for educational purposes, a trend which SIE seeks to support through Climate Station. The company and project collaborators have expressed their aim to not only inform but also inspire players about the choices that can shape the future climate. The application aims to empower users with a sense of agency and a deeper understanding of current scientific perspectives on climate change.
LeMonde
3 days ago
- Science
- LeMonde
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is now impossible
In recent months, scientists had already reached this conclusion individually. On Thursday, June 19, renowned French researchers – former authors for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including paleoclimatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte – asserted it collectively and unequivocally for the first time: The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, established by the Paris Agreement on climate change 10 years ago, "is now longer attainable." Backing up their assertion, which is supported by the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Météo-France, the French national meteorological service, is a study presenting a clinical overview of global warming and confirming its acceleration, to which these institutions contributed. The study was published Thursday in the journal Earth System Science Data and was signed more broadly by 61 scientists from 17 different countries. For the third consecutive year, these researchers updated the key climate indicators from the 2021 report by Working Group 1 of the IPCC. "Our work helps fill a gap caused by the long publication timeline of IPCC reports, as the next one is not expected until the end of the decade," explained Aurélien Ribes, a researcher at the National Center for Meteorological Research and co-author of the study.
Korea Herald
3 days ago
- Science
- Korea Herald
Warning signs on climate flashing: scientists
PARIS (AFP) — From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tons per year — that is 100,000 tons per minute — of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update. Earth's surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term — our 1.5 C "carbon budget" — will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated. Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand. Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5 C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world. The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was "well below" two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7 C to 1.8 C. "We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing. "The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen." No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data. Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record," and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN's most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, in 2021. The new findings — led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods — are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy. They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested. "I tend to be an optimistic person," said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed's Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. "But if you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction." The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said. After creeping up, on average, well under two millimetres per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 millimiters annually since 2019. An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimeters — just over the width of an A4 sheet of paper — over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide. An additional 20 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 would cause $1 trillion in flood damage annually in the world's 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown. Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth's so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it. So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land. But the planet's energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat. Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two. But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear. "We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5 C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made," said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte. The Paris Agreement's 1.5 C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century's end. Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. President Donald Trump's dismantling of domestic climate policies means the United States is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Science
- Winnipeg Free Press
Carbon budget to keep global warming at 1.5 C could be exhausted in 3 years: report
The world is on pace to emit enough greenhouse gas emissions over the next three years to blow by an international target to limit global warming to 1.5 C, according to a new study co-authored by a Canadian researcher who says the finding underlines the need for urgent transformational change. The study by more than 60 scientists says the 1.5-degree carbon budget – how much CO2 can be released while staying below that limit – sits at about 130 billion tonnes as of the start of 2025. At current levels, that budget would be exhausted in a little more than three years, the report said. Within the next decade, the budgets for 1.6 and 1.7 degree warming thresholds are at risk too, the report found. Concordia University professor Damon Matthews said 'every increment matters' in the effort to avoid increasingly severe climate impacts, from thawing permafrost to raging wildfires. 'It's become a question of how low we can keep the temperature peak, and can we implement measures to return from that temperature peak in the latter portion of the century,' said Matthews, a report co-author and carbon budget expert. The 2015 Paris Agreement committed countries to pursue efforts to cap global warming at 1.5 C and keep it well below two degrees compared to the pre-industrial average, a guardrail to avoid some of the most catastrophic and irreversible climate impacts. The more ambitious target was pushed by small island nations and backed by an emerging scientific consensus, which showed it would reduce the risks of extreme heat, sea level rise and coastal flooding. 'It's a notable political failure when we breach that level, that we did not manage to get our stuff together fast enough to solve this problem,' said Matthews. 'We need to have unanimous public support for really bold, ambitious system-changing action.' The third annual Indicators of Global Climate Change report looks to offer several measures reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC publishes comprehensive assessment reports on the latest climate science every five to seven years. The report found that, between 2019 and 2024, global mean sea level had increased by around 26 mm. That's more than double the long-term annual rate of around 1.8 mm since the turn of the 20th century, said the report published in the journal Earth System Science Data. It also confirmed the findings of several other assessments that last year's global surface temperatures surpassed 1.5 degrees for the first time on record. It attributed about 1.36 degrees of that warming to human activity, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Surpassing the 1.5-degree threshold in a single year does not mean the Paris target has been broken. But the report estimates continued emissions at current levels could cause human-induced warming to hit 1.5 degrees in five years. 'The only way we're going to prevent even worse outcomes is to engage and keep pushing, keep implementing the things that are needed to transform the energy system and drive down emissions,' said Matthews. The findings come on the heels of a G7 summit hosted by Canada, where climate change largely eluded discussion. A joint statement by the leaders about efforts to prevent and mitigate wildfires was panned by some climate groups and scientists for failing to mention how climate change has fuelled those fires. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney's support for new oil pipelines has also troubled some climate scientists. 'We're not going to be able to drive emissions down if we keep building new fossil fuel infrastructure,' said Matthews, who also sits on an expert advisory body tasked with helping the federal government hit its climate goals. That Net-Zero Advisory Body has recommended Canada adopt a domestic carbon budget set at between 10,000 and 11,000 megatonnes of CO2. At Canada's current emissions levels, that budget would be exhausted in roughly 15 years. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 18, 2025.
Irish Examiner
4 days ago
- Science
- Irish Examiner
Scientists accuse Ireland and New Zealand of methane ‘accounting trick'
A group of 26 climate scientists from around the world have penned an open letter to New Zealand and Ireland criticising how the methane greenhouse gas is measured. In Ireland's case, it may be a reaction to the programme for government 2025 commitment to "recognise the distinct characteristics of biogenic methane, as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and advocate for the accounting of this greenhouse gas to be re-classified at EU and international level". The 26 scientists, in an open letter shared with the London-based Financial Times newspaper, said governments with large livestock sectors, including those of Ireland and New Zealand, are increasingly using a new method for calculating methane's effect on climate change which estimates its contribution to warming based on how emissions are changing relative to a baseline. They specifically accused politicians in New Zealand and Ireland of using an 'accounting trick' to back their sheep and cattle industries. It is believed they are referring to GWP*, a version of the Global Warming Potential formula devised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Other climate researchers, at the University of Oxford, came up with GWP* about six years ago, as a better way for governments to set emissions targets for different greenhouse gases. They said the original GWP100 method did not reliably account for the different impacts of long-lived (such as carbon dioxide) and short-lived (such as methane) gases. They said different lifespans of emissions were crucial to understanding their potential to warm the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, and even if its emissions ceases, the warming they caused would continues for centuries. But methane does not accumulate, being relatively rapidly removed naturally from the atmosphere. But GWP100 does not allow for this, according to the GWP* camp. Now, a different scientist at the University of Oxford, Paul Behrens, global professor of environmental change at the university, is one of the 26 whose open letter to the Financial Times warned some governments are misapplying GWP*, to justify allowing emissions to remain flat rather than decline. They warned this could set a precedent, allowing other countries to justify minimal reductions in methane emissions, and jeopardising commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement as well as the Global Methane Pledge launched in 2021. Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford University's physics department, and one of the scientists behind GWP*, said governments, not scientists, must decide whether farmers should undo past warming from herd growth. He still supports separate targets for methane and carbon dioxide, saying GWP100 overstates the warming impact of constant methane emissions, and is slow to reflect the impact of emission changes. Read More Rise in low-emission slurry spreading puts Ireland on track for ammonia target
