Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

Will 2024 Be Hotter Than 2023?

On weather trends, China’s climate envoy, and fixing the world's farming sector

Will 2024 Be Hotter Than 2023?
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Tornadoes terrorized Oklahoma overnight • Flash floods killed two people in China’s Guangxi region • It is 75 degrees Fahrenheit and clear in Rafah, where Israeli troops have seized the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt.

THE TOP FIVE

1. April broke heat records, but wild temperatures could moderate slightly soon

Temperature data for last month is rolling in, and the takeaway is that it was the hottest April on record for planet Earth. That marks 11 straight months of record heat, and researchers are starting to do some informed analysis on whether 2024 will displace 2023 as the hottest year. El Niño’s retreat could bring slightly cooler temperatures, and the data suggests that, while temperature records are still being broken, they’re not being absolutely shattered, which I suppose is good news? For example, September last year was 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the previest hottest September. Last month was only 0.1 or 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous hottest April. “If 2024 continues to follow its expected trajectory, global temperatures will fall out of record territory in the next month or two,” wrote climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Still, he puts the chances that this year will be hotter than last at about 66%. “If the latter half of 2024 ends up similar to 2023, we may end up closer to 1.6C for the year as a whole.”

X/hausfath

2. China and U.S. climate envoys to meet in Washington

Coming up this week: Climate envoys for China and the U.S. will meet in Washington Wednesday and Thursday to discuss solutions for “accelerating concrete climate actions this decade,” the State Department announced. Liu Zhenmin and John Podesta will discuss topics like the energy transition, methane emissions, resource efficiency, and deforestation. The U.S. and China are the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters, and the sit-down marks the envoys’ “first formal face-to-face summit before global negotiations in Azerbaijan this November,” Bloombergreported. China’s dominance in cheap green technology manufacturing will no doubt loom large over the talks, as well. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has criticized the country’s excessive output of products like solar panels, and recently called for “constructive” discussions to encourage China to reduce its manufacturing subsidies.

Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:

* indicates required
  • 3. World Bank recommends rich nations stop subsidizing livestock farming

    The World Bank published a new report this week examining how countries can cut emissions from their food sectors. “Simply changing how middle-income countries use land, such as forests and ecosystems, for food production can cut agrifood emissions by a third by 2030,” said World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg. One recommendation, spotted byBloomberg, is that high-income countries stop subsidizing livestock farming and shift that financial support over to more environmentally friendly foods like fruits, vegetables, and poultry. “Globally, one-third of agricultural subsidies were directed toward meat and milk products in 2016,” the report said. But subsidies mask the true costs (environmental or otherwise) of these products. Cutting them could “lead to significant changes in consumption patterns and large emissions reductions.”

    World Bank/Recipe for a Livable Planet report

    Investment in overhauling agrifood will need to rise by $260 billion annually to halve emissions by 2030, the World Bank report said. But the cost benefits in terms of health, economic, and environmental outcomes are projected to surpass $4 trillion in 2030, which the report noted is a 16-to-1 return on investment costs.

    4. Lula calls for national climate disaster plan after floods devastate Brazil

    The flooding in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state has prompted President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to call for a national plan to be put into place for preventing and dealing with climate disasters, The Washington Postreported. He instructed top environmental lieutenant Marina Silva to start putting together a strategy. “We have to stop just running after disaster,” Lula told the Post. “We have to start preparing for what can happen from disasters. … We and the world need to prepare every day with more plans and resources to deal with extreme climate occurrences.” At least 83 people are known to have died in the floods but the death toll is likely to climb. More than 20,000 people have lost their homes. Hospitals are without power. Inmates have been released from flooded prisons. Looting has begun. “This is war; that is the word,” said journalist Kelly Matos. “It’s hopelessness, civil unrest. … The tsunami is here.”

    A flooded hospital entrance in Porto Alegre Max Peixoto/Getty Images

    5. Texas grid begins drawing power from new large solar and storage facility

    A large solar farm capable of powering 41,600 homes has been completed in Texas. The Zier facility in Brackettville, developed by Cypress Creek Renewables, has 208-megawatts of solar capacity and 80 megawatt hours of storage, and it’s already connected to and being used by the Texas grid “to ease supply strain in a time of increased demand,” Cypress Creek said in a news release. The company has 24 projects in construction or development in the state, one of which is a 100 megawatt hour battery storage facility that should be up and running next month.

    Cypress Creek Renewables

    THE KICKER

    “The worst thing for the energy transition is that it is perceived as being done by and for the elites.”Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency

    Yellow

    You’re out of free articles.

    Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
    To continue reading
    Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
    or
    Please enter an email address
    By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
    Economy

    Tariffs Will Flatten the U.S. Bicycle Industry

    Businesses were already bracing for a crash. Then came another 50% tariff on Chinese goods.

    An e-bike and money.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    When I wrote Heatmap’s guide to driving less last year, I didn’t anticipate that a good motivation for doing so would be that every car in America was about to get a lot more expensive.

    Then again, no one saw the breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s tariffs coming. “We would characterize this slate of tariffs as ‘worse than the worst case scenario,’” one group of veteran securities analysts wrote in a note to investors last week, a sentiment echoed across Wall Street and reflected in four days of stock market turmoil so far.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green
    Economy

    Tariffs Are Making Gas Cheaper — But Not Cheap Enough

    Any household savings will barely make a dent in the added costs from Trump’s many tariffs.

    A gas station.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Donald Trump’s tariffs — the “fentanyl” levies on Canada, China, and Mexico, the “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every country (and some uninhabited islands), and the global 10% tariff — will almost certainly cause consumer goods on average to get more expensive. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that in combination, the tariffs Trump has announced so far in his second term will cause prices to rise 2.3%, reducing purchasing power by $3,800 per year per household.

    But there’s one very important consumer good that seems due to decline in price.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green
    Electric Vehicles

    There Has Never Been a Better Time for EV Battery Swapping

    With cars about to get more expensive, it might be time to start tinkering.

    A battery with wheels.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    More than a decade ago, when I was a young editor at Popular Mechanics, we got a Nissan Leaf. It was a big deal. The magazine had always kept long-term test cars to give readers a full report of how they drove over weeks and months. A true test of the first true production electric vehicle from a major car company felt like a watershed moment: The future was finally beginning. They even installed a destination charger in the basement of the Hearst Corporation’s Manhattan skyscraper.

    That Leaf was a bit of a lump, aesthetically and mechanically. It looked like a potato, got about 100 miles of range, and delivered only 110 horsepower or so via its electric motors. This made the O.G. Leaf a scapegoat for Top Gear-style car enthusiasts eager to slander EVs as low-testosterone automobiles of the meek, forced upon an unwilling population of drivers. Once the rise of Tesla in the 2010s had smashed that paradigm and led lots of people to see electric vehicles as sexy and powerful, the original Leaf faded from the public imagination, a relic of the earliest days of the new EV revolution.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green