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

 

 

Anti-disease forest fungi thrive when they can hear their neighbors: a lesson in diversity

 

There is such value in diversity.

We can take a lesson from a new bit of science that suggests that life performs better when surrounded by its community.

This study found that certain fungi grow faster—many times faster—in an environment that includes sound, even if the species itself does not make sounds.

In the soil, if you were to insert a sensitive microphone, you would pick up the rustle of ants, the scuffling of scurrying beetles, the whisper of larvae, the swooshing of earthworms on their liquid missions and the motion of all the other critters that normally occupy a healthy underground environment.

Fungi don’t have ears, but from this study, clearly they can sense the presence of other creatures by the impacts of their movements, and you could anthropomorphize that they appreciate the company. They certainly behave as if they do.

This particular study was published in the journal Biology Letters. It was reviewed in the New York Times here. 

Wrote Times writer Veronique Greenwood: “Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. If the laboratory findings can be replicated in nature, then sound could be an unexpected new tool for improving the health of forests, encouraging beneficial microbes to take root and thrive.”

In this case, the researchers just played white noise for the green fungi, and saw dramatic increases in growth compared to the fungi grown in silence.

And here’s a leap.

A totally other piece of science, from the 13 September 2024 issue of Science magazine, expressed concern that the survival of Asian forest trees that contain anti-cancer properties is threatened. People are going into the forest and harvesting the trees to rarity and endangered status.

“Without these trees, cancer patients will lose access to a vital treatment,” wrote authors Gao Chen, Xiang-Hai Cai, Jia Tang, Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne Renner.

In Hawai’i, we have seen the impacts of loss of diversity. If you lose a pollinating bird species, you risk losing the plants they pollinate, and then the insect and fungal communities that rely on those plants. Round and round it goes.

Back to the fungus study, researchers aren’t sure how the fungi are sensing the sound.

“The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon may be fungal mechanoreceptor stimulation and/or potentially a piezoelectric effect; however, further research is required to confirm this hypothesis,” wrote authors Jake M. Robinson, Amy Annells, Christian Cando-Dumancela and Martin F. Breed.

But it was clear that in the presence of sound—all other things being equal—this little green fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, produces lots more biomass and also produces more spores, than in silence.

And they give back to their forest community. These little life forms colonize tree roots, and then protect the trees from disease and rot-causing fungi. They’re so good at it that they’re used as a natural fungicide—applied to leaves, seeds and the soil around valued plants.

Nature’s message is that a diverse community is a far healthier, more productive one.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024