Are the extreme environmental disasters we see regularly on the news a foretaste of what’s to come for this new decade? In the past, scientists and activists have been warning us that these events would occur.

Climate scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress about the dangers of climate change as early as 1988 (Nuccitelli, 2018).

It is happening and will continue to worsen if carbon emissions continue to rise and exceed the 1.5°C temperature increase target.

HuffPost’s article, “7 Numbers Show How Dire Climate Change Got This Decade”, enumerates the extreme weather events in the last decade, linking them to the planet’s warming (Grossman, S.R., & O’Connor, 2019). Grossman and O’Connor wrote, “In the past decade, the climate crisis, and its fatal consequences, deepened further, as temperatures rose around the globe, ice caps melted, sea levels rose and record-breaking hurricanes, floods and wildfires devastated communities across the US.”

And of course, the bushfires that are ravaging across Australia, killing millions of animals, destroying ecosystems, and burning down homes. It has come earlier this year due to prolonged hot and dry seasons (Australia fires, 2020).

In their Huffpost article, Grossman, S.R., and O’Connor (2019) enumerated the seven ‘figures’ of extreme weather events that have occurred in the last decade, showing how critical the climate problem is.

No. 1 – The last 5 years, from 2014 to 2018, show record-high temperatures.

These were recorded by NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. High temperatures create extreme floods, hurricanes, and deadly wildfires. Since 2016, at least 50% of coral reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world, have died.

No. 2 – Four of the five largest wildfires in California history have happened this decade.

The Mendocino Complex fire in July 2018 that scorched around 200 hectares of land, the Campfire that burned down nearly the whole town of Paradise, killing 85 people, and fires in Napa and Sonoma, which saw 22 people dead and burned down houses in Santa Rosa.

No. 3 – Six Category 5 hurricanes have torn through the Atlantic in the past four years.

Hurricane Dorian landed in the northern Bahamas in early 2019, flooding 70% of Grand Bahama. Hurricane Lorenzo in September, Hurricane Michael in 2018, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, killing thousands in Puerto Rico, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Hurricane Harvey in 2017, a category 4 hurricane, brought a record amount of rainfall in parts of Texas, killing more than 80 people. Scientists say climate change makes storms at least 15% stronger because of global warming.

No. 4 – The Arctic sea ice cover decreased by 13% this decade.

According to a UN report in 2019, there has been an ‘unprecedented’ melting of ice sheets and shrinking glaciers this decade, which is raising sea levels. The most remarkable event was the death of the Okjokull glacier in Iceland. Both scientists and environmentalists held a funeral near the site where the OK glacier had been (Bouhassira, 2019).

Scientists warned that rising sea levels due to the melting of glaciers and sea ice will make coastal cities and towns more vulnerable to climate-related hazards such as tropical cycles, flooding, marine heat waves, permafrost thaw, and sea ice loss.

No. 5 – 1000-year floods have occurred frequently.

Based on the century of flood data that researchers have compiled, these floods are not ordinary but a deluge of water from very heavy rainfall. These once-in-every-one-thousand floods are occurring more frequently.

Hurricane Harvey was one of these 1,000-year events. It’s hard for people to grasp this 1,000-year phenomenon, but in 2016, five of this kind of flooding had already hit the US, making experts wonder whether the global rise in temperatures has made these current-prediction models obsolete.

No. 6 – More than 100 “billion-dollar” disasters have happened, twice more than the previous decade.

The US has experienced more than 100 disaster events, losing more than a billion dollars each. This figure is twice as high as the cost in the past decade. The five most expensive events are the 2017 Hurricane Harvey, with an estimated loss of $130 billion. The next is Hurricane Maria, at $93 billion, Hurricane Sandy, at $73 billion, and Hurricane Irma, at $52 billion.

No. 7 – Amidst all these climate disasters, we’ve released 40.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2019.

Decades of increasing Carbon emissions

Carbon emissions have increased fourfold since 1960, reaching a new high in 2018. The increase is mainly due to outputs in China and India.

Based on current emission trends, scientists are projecting a temperature increase of 3.2°C by the end of this century. This increase is more than double what scientists project will cause irreversible damage to the planet.

The next ten years are crucial, the article says, a time to take urgent, sweeping, and unprecedented climate actions to prevent the worst disasters to come.

What will happen if the Global temperature keeps rising in 2020 and beyond?

In another article by David Roberts, the message is bleak. The ambitious target to limit the rise in global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius is ‘almost certainly not going to happen’. A graph by the Carbon Brief shows that emissions must drop drastically starting in 2020, like a cliff or a reduction of 15 per cent in carbon emissions every year, to keep track with the 1.5°C temperature rise or until we hit net zero. (Roberts, 2020).

So, how did scientists conclude that 1.5°C is acceptable and safe enough?

This is because, according to the IPCC’s special report, a 2°C rise in temperature will be devastating to humanity. A 1.5°C increase will even create “high multiple interrelated climate risks” for some low-lying small island states in the Pacific and least developed countries (Roberts, 2020).

At a 2°C temperature rise, there will be 2.6 times more severe heat events, double the loss of plant and vertebrate species, three times the loss of insects, and twice the decline in marine life. Ninety-nine per cent of coral reefs will die compared to 70 to 90 per cent of a 1.5°C rise.

With only a 1.3°C temperature rise, we see unprecedented burning in the US and Australia. How much worse will it get with a 1.5 °C or even 2°C rise?

What should we do about this if we go above 1.5°C and even exceed 2°C?

To summarize Roberts’s article, he writes that we should drastically reduce carbon emissions by doing what we should have done 20 years earlier.

He says, “No magic switch flips at 1.5, 1.7, 2.3, or 2.8, or 3.4°C temperature rise. And amidst these bleak predictions of the consequences of the warming planet, we shouldn’t lose hope at all. For those who have started to battle climate change, they should not stop but forge on until emissions drop. This also means getting serious with climate adaptation. Prepare communities and help them prepare for more extreme climate events, such as those living in fire-prone or coastal areas at risk of sea-level rise and its consequences (Roberts, 2019).