Earthweek: Diary of a Changing World
Emissions Decline
Greenhouse gas emissions fell by 1.9% in the United States last year even as the country’s economy grew, a leading research organization says.
The New York-based Rhodium Group says that while the drop is noteworthy, the country must curb its planet-warming emissions by an average of 6.9% annually from 2024 through 2030 to meet its target under the Paris Agreement.
The 2023 decline was driven by an 8% drop in emissions in the power sector and a 4% decline in residential and commercial buildings. U.S. emissions remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2023 and were also 17.2% below those in 2005.
Earthquakes
Greater Oklahoma City was jolted by 19 tremors during a two-day period. Such tremors in the past have been linked to wastewater injection wells from oil and gas extraction.
• Earth movements were also felt around San Diego and in the Alaska Panhandle, southeastern South Australia and the Azores.
Ocean Heating
An international team of scientists says Earth’s oceans absorbed a record amount of heat during 2023, contributing to the overall unprecedented planetary heat and triggering more climate-related disasters worldwide. Writing in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science, researchers say temperatures of the upper 6,500 feet of the oceans, responsible for soaking up about 90% of global heating, were hotter each year between 2012 and 2023 than the year before.
The oceanic heat is also said to be “supercharging” the weather, with the higher heat and extra moisture in the atmosphere creating more severe storms, more powerful winds and heavier downpours that amplify flooding disasters.
Mystery Blasts
Scientists say they may have solved a decade-long mystery of why several deep, cylindrical craters have formed in violent explosions on northwest Siberia’s Yamal peninsula, sometimes tossing bus-sized chunks of ice hundreds of yards from the crater.
Researcher Helge Hellevang at the University of Oslo says these “gas emission craters,” first discovered in 2012, could be forming because of global heating.
He and colleagues believe the hot, methane-rich natural gas upwelling from a deeper source may be blasted through the permafrost because it has melted so much.
Tropical Cyclones
Parts of the Indian Ocean island of Réunion were swamped when Category-2 Cyclone Belal became the first such storm to make a direct hit on the French overseas territory in decades. Nearby Mauritius also experienced heavy flooding and one death from the passing storm.
• Tropical Storm Anggrek drifted around the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia’s Cocos Islands.
Sardine Bonanza
Countless millions of sardines beached themselves in the far southern Philippines, turning the coastline a shimmering silver and sending local residents to the coast to collect as much of the seafood as they could carry away. One family said they hauled off a half-ton of the tiny fish.
While the area was hit by a sharp earthquake around 48 hours later, experts say the two events were not related and other factors were likely to blame for the mass stranding in Maasim, located near the southern tip of Mindanao Island.
Fresh Eruption
The second eruption in less than a month on Iceland’s rugged Reykjanes
Peninsula sent lava flowing
into the evacuated town of Grindavik, destroying three homes and damaging water and electricity facilities before subsiding.
It was the fifth eruption
there since 2021, and the Icelandic Meteorological
Office warned new fissures
could open without warning.