“Connecting the Dots”: November 2024

On this month’s edition of Connecting the Dots (November 2024):

This Year “Virtually Certain” to be Hottest on Record, Says EU Space Program. The Guardian has an update; here’s the intro: “It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has found. The prognosis comes the week before diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical polluter of planet-heating gas, chose to make Donald Trump president. Trump has described climate change as a “hoax” and promised to roll back policies to clean up the economy. The report found 2024 is likely to be the first year more than 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, a level of warming that has alarmed scientists...”

Weather and climate extremes are trending more extreme over time, due to additional warming, mostly from burning fossil fuels. From CNN: ” The total cost of damage from climate-related extreme weather events globally was approximately $2 trillion between 2014 and 2023, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. That’s roughly in line with the economic toll of the 2008 global financial crisis. There has also been an 83% increase in recorded climate disasters between 1980-1999 and 2000-2019, the ICC says…”

We Study Climate Change. We Can’t Explain What We’re Seeing. Warming appears to be accelerating acording to New York Times contributors and climate scientists Zeke Hausfather and Gavin Schmidt. Here’s the intro to their essay at NY Times: “The earth has been exceptionally warm of late, with every month from June 2023 until this past September breaking records. It has been considerably hotter even than climate scientists expected. Average temperatures during the past 12 months have also been above the goal set by the Paris climate agreement: to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. We know human activities are largely responsible for the long-term temperature increases, as well as sea level rise, increases in extreme rainfall and other consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Yet the unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted (even as they generally remain within the expected range)…”

Hot Real Estate These Days is Also Climate Resilient. Always build on higher ground right? Property insurance premiums are spiking, and a rapidly-changing climate is being factored in by carriers. Here’s an excerpt from Marketplace: “Eva Davis is a real estate agent in Washington, D.C., and almost every one of her clients these days is asking about climate risks. “I would say flood risk is definitely the biggest one,” she said. It’s a shift she’s noticed in the last few years as storms have gotten worse. “And I also think the other piece of it that I’ve really seen — this is more in the last year, like 2024 — has been that homeowners insurance has been harder and harder to get,” Davis noted. Climate concerns are playing an increasingly large role in house shopping. Nearly 90% of prospective homebuyers say it’s very important to them that the house they buy have at least one climate-resilient feature, according to a new report out from Zillow…”

Mapped: How Climate Change Affects Extreme Weather Around the World. Carbon Brief takes a look at how a warmer, wetter, more volatile climate is juicing weather extremes across the planet; here’s an excerpt: “…To keep track of this rapidly growing field of research, Carbon Brief has mapped every published study on how climate change has influenced extreme weather. This latest iteration of the interactive map (below) includes more than 600 studies, covering almost 750 extreme weather events and trends. Across all these cases, 74% were made more likely or severe because of climate change. This includes multiple cases where scientists found that an extreme was virtually impossible without human influence on global temperatures. Around 9% of the events and trends in the map were made less likely or severe by climate change. This means that, overall, 83% of the events and trends included in the map were found to have been influenced by human-caused climate change…”

Fall Has Felt More Like Summer This Year. It’s a Sign of Things to Come. Yes, it’s staying milder, longer than it did a generation ago. CNN.com has the story: “Summerlike warmth has been eating away at fall in the United States this year as the season continues to wither in a warming world. If you feel cheated out of crisp autumn weather this year, know you’re not alone. This fall is on pace to be one of, if not the warmest on record across the Lower 48, a CNN analysis of preliminary data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information shows. The average temperature across the Lower 48 this fall is more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal as of November 15. The warmest fall on record in 2016 was 4.04 degrees warmer than average. This fall will likely finish cooler than 7 degrees above normal with storms on the way this week, but it has still been the warmest start to fall on record...”

Microplastics Promote Cloud Formation, with Likely Effects on Weather and Climate. It turns out we may in fact be impacting weather, just not the way conspiracy theorists predicted. Here’s a clip from The Conversation: “Clouds form when water vapor – an invisible gas in the atmosphere – sticks to tiny floating particles, such as dust, and turns into liquid water droplets or ice crystals. In a newly published study, we show that microplastic particles can have the same effects, producing ice crystals at temperatures 5 to 10 degrees Celsius (9 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than droplets without microplastics. This suggests that microplastics in the air may affect weather and climate by producing clouds in conditions where they would not form otherwise. We are atmospheric chemists who study how different types of particles form ice when they come into contact with liquid water. This process, which occurs constantly in the atmosphere, is called nucleation.

Who’s to Blame for Climate Change? It’s Surprisingly Complicated. MIT Technology Review has the post; here’s an excerpt: “…Breaking things down by country, China is far and away the single biggest polluter today, a distinction it has held since 2006. The country currently emits roughly twice as much greenhouse gas as any other nation. The power sector is its single greatest source of emissions as the grid is heavily dependent on coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. The US is the world’s second-biggest polluter, followed by India. Combined emissions from the 27 nations that make up the European Union are next, followed by Russia and Japan...”

Climate Change is Increasing Hurricane Wind Speeds, Study Finds. Axios has details: “Climate change strengthened the maximum wind speeds of Atlantic hurricanes by an average of 18 mph during the past five years, a new study published Wednesday shows.

Why it matters: The study is among the first to show a link between hotter ocean temperatures and stronger hurricane wind speeds. It ties climate change to a hurricane’s destructive potential.

• Previous research mainly focused on how climate change is causing hurricanes to produce more precipitation and alter their movement in some areas.

Zoom in: A storm can cause far more damage with each successive category it achieves on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, as the scale isn’t linear but rather logarithmic…”

Praedictix

Who is Praedictix? We are a weather company that focuses on delivering credible weather forecasts to our clients. We have three main offerings: media, weather graphics, and weather consulting.

Media: With three HD studios, we’re able to create professional weather forecast videos for use in television, social media, apps, and websites. Our forecasts are tailored to our clients’ brand. Our content ranges from national to hyperlocal forecasts and air all over the country.

Weather Graphics: We have access to a robust weather dataset which allows us to create highly customizable, HD weather maps and graphics for use in television, digital signage, social media, and websites. Our white-label graphics allow our clients to push their own brands and sponsors.

Consulting: We lend our weather expertise to our clients to help with risk mitigation and business optimization by way of conference calls, emails, and briefings. We also have a forensic meteorology team that specializes in forensic weather analysis and expert testimony.

Click right HERE to learn more about us or contact us for your weather needs.

Thanks for checking in!