1/2 meter of SLR will flood land currently occupied by 50 million people
5o C would be the warmest the Earth has been in 50 million years
5-10 million years ago the Arctic seems to have been ice-free at 450ppm CO2
6 zetajoules of energy are being added to upper ocean every year, compared to 0.5 zetajoules consumed by humans
50 billion tons of methane are stored as methane hydrates under the East Siberian Arctic ice shelf
A 1 in 3.5 million chance that climate warming is not human-caused
An ice-free Arctic could absorb heat equivalent to 1 trillion tons of CO2 emissions, accelerating warming by 25 years
Arctic soils could store a trillion tons of carbon
At the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, a mass extinction event wiped out 90% of life on the planet - it was associated with a 6o C rise in temperature
Between 2006 and 2008, soaring global food prices put 100 million people back into poverty
Cities are “moving south” by 20 km per year, or 54 meters per day, 2 meters per hour, or half a milimeter per second
CO2 levels now higher than in last 3-5 million years
Each day over 30o C reduces maize productivity by 1%, up to 2% if combined with drought
Each ton of emitted CO2 is responsible for the loss of 15 tons of Himalayan glacier ice
Every ton of CO2 released results in 3 m2 of Arctic ice being lost
Greenland’s ice sheet can warm suddenly. About 12,000 years ago it warmed by 15o C in just a few decades
Large areas of the PNW are now too dry to support regeneration of Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine after fires
Ocean warming can translate into 2-5 kilometers per year of “tropicalization”
Oceans have lost 77 billion tons or 2% of oxygen over last 50 years
On average global climate zones are already shifting at a rate of 5 meters per day
Past high-temperature periods on the planet took thousands of years to develop
Protecting U.S. coasts could cost $400 billion over the next 20 years, and trillions this century
Seasonal glacier meltwater supplies the needs of more than 200 million people
The 6 zetajoules of energy being added to the oceans per year equates to the equivalent of 3 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy being added to oceans ever second
The AMOC transfers heat to the North equivalent to 500,000 nuclear power plants
The amount of Arctic sea ice lost since 1980 would cover 40% of contiguous U.S.
The Brazilian rainforest stores between 150 and 200 billion tons of carbon
The generally recognised definition for ‘ice-free’ is therefore the first year when September (late summer) sea ice extent falls below one million square kilometres.
The UK MET Office’s super computers can run 14,000 trillion arithmetic operations per second
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) sits on bedrock from hundreds to thousands of meters below sea level