2. Climate change drives world to first 12-month spell over 1.5C
The world just experienced its warmest January on record, marking the first 12-month period in which temperatures averaged more than 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial times, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service said.
This comes as unusually mild weather and droughts in Italy are destroying crops and threatening livelihoods this winter, Italy’s main farming lobby Coldiretti said.
Additionally, Spain has logged the warmest January since records began in 1961, with average temperatures last month reaching 8.4 degrees Celsius (47.1° Fahrenheit), 0.4 degrees above the previous record in 2016, the Environment Ministry said.
3. Shift from El Nino to La Nina portends rains in Asia, dryness in Americas
After a strong El Nino, global weather is poised to transition to La Nina in the second half of 2024, a pattern typically bringing higher precipitation to Australia, Southeast Asia and India and drier weather to grain and oilseed producing regions of the Americas, meteorologists and agricultural analysts said.
4. How climate change made Chile’s wildfires so deadly
Survivors of Chile’s recent deadly wildfires described a hellish nightmare, a hurricane of fireballs leaping from hill to hill, lighting up everything within its path in seconds. Click here for a Reuters story on the effects of climate change on Chile’s wildfire, featuring insights from climatologists and scientists.
5. Iceland volcano fades but leaves residents in the cold
Iceland’s latest volcanic eruption waned on Friday but left a trail of damage to roads and pipelines, cutting hot water to parts of the Reykjanes peninsula during freezing temperatures.
