DeBriefed 30 August 2024: Sea level rise ‘crisis’; African floods; Studying climate change in Svalbard

Daisy Dunne

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

Surging seas

‘UNIMAGINABLE CRISIS’: UN secretary general António Guterres warned that sea level rise is a “crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety”, reported the Associated Press. Speaking at a Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting in Tonga on Tuesday, he said: “A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril…The ocean is overflowing.”

RISING WATERS: Ahead of the speech, the UN released two separate reports on rising sea levels and their impacts on Pacific nations, BBC News reported. One of the reports, “surging seas in a warming world”, showed that global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years. According to the report, levels have risen by an average of 9.4cm in the past 30 years. But in the tropical Pacific, levels have risen by 15cm.

African floods

NIGERIA DELUGE: Floods in Africa’s most populous nation Nigeria have killed at least 170 people and displaced a further 200,000, CNN reported. Manzo Ezekiel, from the country’s National Emergency Management Authority, told the broadcaster that “some places that were not previously known to be prone to floods are experiencing floods this time because of climate change”.

BURST DAM: At least 60 people have been killed after a major dam burst in Sudan, following weeks of torrential rainfall, the Times reported. The newspaper said that the dam is close to Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea that has been the “de-facto base of the government and aid agencies since the outbreak of civil war in April last year”. 

MALI FLOODS: Elsewhere, Mali has declared a state of national disaster “over floods that have killed 30 people and affected over 47,000 others since the start of the rainy season”,  Reuters reported. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported on a government statement saying that 19,347 children were among those affected by the flooding.

§ Around the world

  • SOUTH KOREA SUED: A “landmark” court ruling found South Korea’s climate law violated the rights of future generations by failing to set emissions targets between 2031 and 2050, Channel News Asia reported. The ruling sets a February 2026 deadline to amend the law with new targets, added the Guardian.
  • EU SUED: Climate activists have taken the European Commission to court in an attempt to force it to strengthen its 2030 emissions plan and, in a second case, to abandon plans to label some planes as “climate-friendly investments”, Reuters said.
  • ROSEBANK BLOW: The UK government announced it will not defend legal challenges against Rosebank or Jackdaw, two of the largest untapped oil and gas fields approved by the previous government. Environmental lawyer Tessa Khan explained what this means for UK fossil fuels.
  • GAMING GAEMI: A World Weather Attribution analysis found that fossil-fuelled climate change increased the rains and winds of Typhoon Gaemi, which killed 48 people and affected a further 6.5 million in July. Separate analysis found Typhoon Shanshan, which BBC News said has killed at least four people in Japan, was made 7.5% more intense and 26% more likely as a result of climate change.
  • ‘IMMORAL AND UNACCEPTABLE’: The climate minister of Tuvalu said that “opening, subsidising and exporting fossil fuels is immoral and unacceptable” a day after Australia ratified a new security and climate deal with the Pacific island nation, the Guardian reported. 

§ 2,325

The number of people in the US killed by heat in 2023 – a new record, reported the Hill.

§ Latest climate research

  • American Indian communities risk missing out on a potential $19bn in lease and tax earnings from renewable energy by 2050, if little is done to address barriers to project development, new Nature Energy research said.
  • A study in Nature Human Behaviour explored the effectiveness of communicating the scientific consensus on climate change in 27 countries and the impact of describing warming as a “crisis”, concluding that such a narrative is “effective”, but “provides no added value”.
  • Climate change contributed to a deadly avalanche in Nepal in 2015 that was initially triggered by an earthquake, according to new research in Communications Earth and Environment.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Melting glacier ice

Image - Debriefed captured image - ice in the Arctic. (note)

These otherworldly grey and blue chunks of ice were photographed by Carbon Brief earlier today, during a boat trip to see the Blomstrandbreen glacier near Ny-Ålesund, a climate science research hub on the Arctic island of Svalbard (more on this trip below). Glaciers – massive frozen rivers of ice – are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Hotter ocean and air temperatures surrounding glaciers cause them to melt away more quickly. These chunks of glacier ice – some as large as a four-seater car – have broken off from Blomstrandbreen. They will take a few weeks to melt completely, contributing to global sea level rise.  

§ Spotlight

Studying climate change in Svalbard

Greetings from Ny-Ålesund, the Earth’s most northern human settlement on the Norwegian island of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean.

Just 1,231 kilometres (km) from the North Pole, the tiny Arctic town started life as a coal mining district in the early 20th century, but today operates solely as an international climate research hub.

The town’s few buildings – hosting research stations from a range of countries including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK – are surrounded by vast glaciers and fjords leading out to the Arctic Ocean, which is covered by sea ice in winter months.

This environment offers scientists a gateway to study how climate change is affecting the Arctic’s ice, ocean, atmosphere and ecosystems. The Arctic is heating up four times faster than the global average. In Svalbard, temperatures are rising even faster, with the island warming seven times faster than the global average.

While conducting their research, scientists here must contend with a host of challenges reflective of the extreme environment. All researchers out in the field must carry a gun, as well as flares, to protect themselves in case of a polar bear encounter.

Carbon Brief has joined scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to learn more about their research into how climate change is affecting the Arctic, as well as to experience what life is like for a research scientist living and working in the polar regions.

Earlier today, Carbon Brief hosted an hour-long webinar with Henry Burgess, head of the Arctic office for BAS, and Dorothea Moser, an ice cores scientist, live from the UK’s research station in Ny-Ålesund.

Our discussion covered everything from how climate change is affecting ocean currents and sea ice to what scientists here eat and how they spend their free time. The whole conversation is available to watch on YouTube.

§ Watch, read, listen

DISINFORMATION DEBATE: Social scientist Prof Holly Buck sparked debate by arguing in an essay for Jacobin that the US environmental movement is too focused on calling out climate disinformation. 

AFRICAN EQUITY: A feature in the UN magazine African Renewal examined how to boost the numbers of female climate scientists in sub-Saharan African countries. 

‘THREAT MULTIPLIER’: For Al Jazeera, Othman Belbeisi, from the International Organization for Migration, highlighted how climate change is exacerbating the impacts of conflict in Sudan and Gaza. 

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].
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