More and worse than ever: World Meteorological Organization new climate report

 There are those—some of them in our nation’s leadership—who still deny climate science.

It’s a little like rejecting the rain forecast when the flood is already up to your knees.

The World Meteorological Organization just issued its State of the Climate report. It is no longer about predictions, because the predictions of past decades are all now coming to pass.

 Here is the WMO press release about the report. 

Here is the actual WMO report. 

World atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels are the highest they have been in 800,000 years, and so are its fellow greenhouse gases methan and nitrous oxide.

Global surface temperatures are the highest they have been since records have been kept. Last year was the single hottest year on record, and the past decade is the single hottest decade on record. And it continues. January 2025 was the hottest January on record.

The oceans, which store massive amounts of heat, are hotter than ever. Each of the past eight years has been the hottest. Oceans take up 90% of the heat rise that is driven by greenhouse gas increases. Without the oceans taking up heat, the atmospheric temperatures would be even higher.

In part because of the heat, sea levels are rising faster than ever—both because warmer water takes up more volume and because glaciers are melting their stored water back into the sea.

The ocean is acidifying at a record pace—and changing the chemistry of the oceans will have significant effects. Says WMO: “The effects of ocean acidification on habitat area, biodiversity and ecosystems have already been clearly observed, and food production from shellfish aquaculture and fisheries has been hit as have coral reefs.”

All that warming and its impacts lead to weather disruptions, and the report says that extreme weather events in 2024 led to the highest level of human disruptions on record.

It takes all kinds of forms. One of them, for Hawai`i residents, is an ongoing drought that has produced the lowest stream flows since we started keeping records more than a century ago.

 The changes in climate also lead to reductions in food and fishery production, driving food insecurity on a global scale.

The severity of the climate disruption is such that the WMO is now more about responding to the chaos than stopping it. In the foreword to the report, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said this:

“WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate. We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate multi-hazard early warning systems. This must change.”

The World Meteorological Organization is a non-governmental international organizatioTn founded as a place where international researchers could share data. It was created in 1950, but is rooted in the International Meteorological Organization, which dates back to 1873.

It is not just WMO reporting this.

Here is NOAA’s report: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202413

And here is the European Union’s Copernicus Program report: https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024

 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2025

For Hawaiian monk seals, a glimmer of hope

There were years when we despaired about the survival of Hawaiian monk seals. 

 Image: A young seal at Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Credit: NOAA Fisheries Hawaiian monk seal research program.

 

Populations were dropping year after year and nothing seemed to be able to turn that around. Take a look at RaisingIslands' 2008 post on the distressing status of seals at that time.

Now, a little hopeful news. It’s a slow process, but there has been a stabilization, and a tiny, steady increase in numbers for about the last 10 years. Over that time, up from just 1,400 to a current population estimated at about 1,600. 

That’s still only a third of what is believed to have been the stable healthy
population in the Islands, before they ran into humans. 

And right now, that increase is in spite of incidents of people shooting them, their getting hooked on fishing hooks, getting entangled in nets, picking up disease from land animals like dogs and cats, their Northwestern Hawaiian Islands pupping grounds disappearing due to ocean changes, shark attacks, and incidents of attacks by pet dogs. 

NOAA Fisheries in a 2022 release noted that the population had surpassed 1,500 for the first time in some 20 years. 

“From 2013 to 2021, the monk seal population grew at an average rate of 2 percent per year, providing hope for the species’ long-term recovery. Even so, the level required for the species to be down-listed from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act is more than double the current number of monk seals,” the report said. 

It is an enormous task to care for the seal population. Federal officials and volunteers keep close watch on them. Sick and injured seals are regularly removed from the wild for hospital care. 

In November 2024 a malnourished pup from an O`ahu beach was transported to the Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital, Ke Kai Ola, in Kona. 

In October a thin and weak pup from Lana`i and Maui was brought into care. 

In September, three malnourished pups from Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands were transported to the medical facility. 

In June, a Kaua`i pup suffering multiple infectious diseases was hospitalized. He was released back into Kaua’i waters healthy in late November. 

Occasionally, seals are relocated to move them from beaches with threats to beaches where they will be safer. 

The effort involves NOAA Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Marine Mammal Center and lots of volunteers. 

Hawaiian monk seals, the most endangered seal species in the world, are found in the Main Hawaiian Islands, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and on Johnston Atoll, which is about 700 miles southwest of O`ahu. 

If you see a seal in trouble, you can email pifsc.monksealsighting@noaa.gov. Or call the Pacific Islands NOAA Marine Wildlife Hotline at (888) 256-9840. 

Here is a NOAA Fisheries resource page for more information about Hawaiian monk seals. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

`Alala, Hawaiian crows, are flying free on Maui

Two ʻalalā. Credit: DLNR

The ʻalalā, the Hawaiian crow, is flying free again in a Hawaiian forest for the first time in years.

Five young birds have been released into the Kīpahulu Forest Reserve on Maui. For now, the birds seem to be staying close to the release site, and will be provided with supplemental food until they develop their foraging skills.

ʻAlalā were once found on several Hawaiian islands, but into the last century, the last place they were located was on Hawai`i Island. A plummeting population prompted an intensive effort to protect the species by bringing a few survivors into captivity.

Surviving birds were moved to Maui, and the captive flock was developed through a joint program of the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project (MFBRP), San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW).

Early efforts to re-release them into the wild on Hawai`i Island ran into problems, like crow predation by the also native `io, or Hawaiian hawk. The `io is not currently found on Maui, so wildlife officials hope the ʻalalā will better thrive there.

It has always been the goal to see ʻalalā return to the wild, not only for the birds, but also for the forest. They can play a key role as seed dispersers.

“We understand how valuable ʻalalā are as a cultural resource as well as a biological resource,” said Martin Frye, research field supervisor for MFBRP. “They play a huge role in Hawaiian culture just as much as they do in the Hawaiian forest. Those two things are linked.”

The five birds selected for the release are young, as young crows are less territorial and are expected to be more gregarious than older birds. They are three males and two juveniles

They will have automated feeder boxes available to them, which will distribute food on demand. The birds are fitted with tiny backpacks that contain Global Positioning System transmitters, which will permit tracking them.

“Our focus is currently on closely monitoring these birds to ensure they have the best opportunities to thrive in their new home in east Maui,” said Chelsie Javar-Salas, supervisory U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist for the Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office.

ʻAlalā are remarkably intelligent birds, but these youngsters are several generations separated from the wild, so they will need to learn to forage and survive.

From a December 4, 2024, press release: “Success for the project relies on how the birds manage to adapt to their new home and can only be measured over time. The field team will continue to monitor the birds into the foreseeable future, supplementing their food and keeping an eye on their health and wellbeing. For now, the birds are free to roam and explore their surroundings, learning and feeling what it means to be wild.”

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

 

 

NatGeo film series, Tsunami: Race Against Time, debuts Nov. 24

It’s been more than a generation since the last seriously devastating tsunami hit the Hawaiian Islands, and most residents have no memory of the threat.

We should remember—so that next time we can protect ourselves and the people for whom we are responsible.

 

 

The 1946 April Fool’s Day Aleutian quake sent a tsunami that devastated Hawaiian coastlines from Hawai’i Island to Kaua’i. The 1957 Aleutian quake’s tsunami caused significant coastal property damage in the Islands. Both destroyed homes and ran up rivers, taking out bridges. The 1960 Chilean quake's tsunami swept in from another direction. Between them, those three events killed more than 200 Hawai’i residents.

The history of the tsunamis of the Hawaiian Islands is kept by Hilo’s Pacific Tsunami Museum. 

Now a new series of films from National Geographic graphically reminds us of the hazard. It is a warning built on the biggest tsunami disaster in centuries—the Christmas tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which hit December 26, 2004. 

The series is Tsunami: Race Against Time.

That series of waves was generated by one of the largest quakes in recorded history, undersea off Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an unbelievably massive event, calculated at magnitude 9.1. The 1960 Chile quake was larger at 9.5, but did not cause as much death and damage.

I reviewed the film series. It contains footage you’ve never seen, and graphically describes the events that killed more than 200,000 people in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other islands and coastlines struck by the tsunami.

It contains first person interviews with survivors, heartbreaking stories, often with real-time imagery of those same people. It describes helplessness and heroism in the face of overwhelming conditions. And the desperate effort of Hawai’i’s tsunami scientists to warn the residents of a different ocean.

“The pure carnage of rushing water,” says one orphaned survivor, who lost his parents in the tsunami.

Among the most tragic images are of families holding each other and then torn apart by swirling gray water. Or of the clueless people who wait too long to run, or who watch until the water washes them away. Of bodies drifting in the water. And of wounded people who die in the aftermath, because the disruption was so severe that it was not possible to get medical care in time.

Most of us followed news footage of the quake and its tsunami in the final days of 2004 and early 2005. But that coverage could not provide the perspective of time. Twenty years later, survivors and rescuers and scientists provide that perspective.

Here is how the film’s producers describe their project:

“Marking 20 years since one of the deadliest natural disasters in history which spanned 14 countries, TSUNAMI: RACE AGAINST TIME provides a 360-degree view into the heart-stopping events of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“The powerful series, from executive producers Tanya Winston and Danny Horan of multi-award-winning Blast Films and directed by Daniel Bogado, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker of Nat Geo’s ‘9/11: One Day in America,’ features personal accounts from survivors, scientists who raced against time to understand the catastrophic disaster and warn the world, journalists who broke the shocking news, and the fearless rescuers who risked their lives to save others.

“Told through harrowing video and gripping stories of survival and courage – some both seen and heard for the first time – the four-part series offers a comprehensive and immersive look at the destructive wave as it surged across the ocean, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.”

The four-part series premieres Nov. 24 at 4 p.m. (Hawai`i time) on National Geographic and streams starting on the 25^th on Disney+ and Hulu.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024