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Sparks

We Breached 1.5 Degrees Celsius of Warming — Sort Of

What today’s news from Copernicus does and doesn’t mean.

Mexico.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Somewhat fittingly, Heatmap’s first year in existence coincided with the planet’s first 12-month period with an average temperature more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to a new report from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. This might not come as a surprise if you’ve been reading us for any amount of time. But still, the number is striking — it’s the target we’ve long heard about, the threshold that the Paris Agreement is trying to keep us under.

It might be easy, then, to look at this report with a bit of despair. I am here to tell you otherwise. Some things to keep in mind:

  • For starters, this report does not mean we’ve missed the Paris Agreement’s target; Copernicus’ report covers average temperatures over one year, while the Paris Agreement’s targets operate on 20- or 30-year timescales.

  • El Niño was also a factor. The warm ocean phenomenon tends to bring higher global temperatures, so it’s possible the average could dip back down in a La Niña year (which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says is probably on its way soon).

  • This threshold is not a point of no return. As I wrote in my very first piece for Heatmap, humanity operates on stunningly compressed time scales compared to the rest of our planet. It didn’t take us very long to reach this point; similarly, the speed of our efforts to decarbonize will affect the speed at which we will return to more livable temperatures.

If anything, think of today’s number news as a call to action. The last year was a preview of what life could be like above 1.5 degrees C; the next few years will likely also be incredibly hot compared to pre-industrial levels, and we must do our best to mitigate the pain and loss to come.

We’ll be covering those efforts at Heatmap, as we always do, but if you’d like an idea of the various paths available to us for decarbonization, this Carbon Brief interactive is a good place to start.

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Sparks

JD Vance on Climate Change: ‘Let’s Just Say That’s True’

“For the sake of argument.”

JD Vance.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

We didn’t have to wait long for climate to come up during tonight’s vice presidential debate between VP hopefuls Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz — the night’s second question was about the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and fueled by warmer air and waters due to climate pollution.

Vance started off his answer innocuously enough, extending his thoughts and prayers to those affected by the hurricane and then proceeding to some campaign boilerplate. “I think it’s important for us, first of all, to say Donald Trump and I support clean air and clean water,” Vance said up top, echoing Trump’s claim that he wants “absolutely immaculate clean water and … absolutely clean air,” from the presidential debate back in June. (It’s worth noting, of course, that his policy choices tell a different story.)

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Sparks

More Hurricanes Are Already Forming in the Atlantic

The lull is over.

Hurricanes in the Atlantic.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

If Hurricane Helene were the only memorable storm to make landfall in the U.S. in 2024, this would still be remembered as an historically tragic season. Since its arrival as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region, Helene has killed more than 100 people and caused more than $160 billion across six states. Recovery efforts are expected to last years, if not decades, in the hardest-hit regions of Western North Carolina, some 300 miles inland and 2,000 feet above the nearest coastline. “Helene is going to go down as one of the most impactful hurricanes in U.S. history,” AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations, Dan DePodwin, told me when we spoke on Friday.

As of Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center is tracking five additional systems in the Atlantic basin. Two of those storms reached named status on Friday — Joyce and Isaac — though their paths appear to keep them safely in the middle of the Atlantic. A third storm, Kirk, reached tropical storm strength on Monday and is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane, but is likewise likely to turn north and stay out at sea.

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Sparks

Tennessee Is Hurricane Country Now

Ocean-based storms are increasingly affecting areas hundreds of miles from the coasts.

Rushing water.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

After a hurricane makes landfall comes the eerie wait for bad news. For Hurricane Helene — now a tropical storm as it barrels toward Nashville — that news came swiftly on Friday morning: at least 4 million are without power after the storm’s Thursday night arrival near Florida’s Big Bend region; more than 20 are dead in three states; and damage estimates are already in the billions of dollars.

But that’s just the news from the coasts.

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