Climate change has pushed Earth to "code red": report

An international coalition of researchers, led by Oregon State University (OSU), has stated in the journal BioScience that the Earth’s vital signs have reached “code red” and that “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency”.

In the special report ‘World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022’, the authors note that 16 of 35 planetary vital signs they use to track climate change are at record extremes. These signs include human population growth, greater consumption of gas, increasing greenhouse emissions including carbon dioxide and methane, shrinking ice and glaciers, rising sea levels, warming oceans, and climbing numbers of hoofed livestock.

The report’s authors also share new data illustrating increasing frequency of extreme heat events, rising global tree cover loss because of fires, and a greater prevalence of the mosquito-borne dengue virus. Further, they note that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have reached 418 parts per million, the highest on record.

OSU Professor William Ripple and postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf are the lead authors of the report, which is co-authored by 10 other US and global scientists — including Australia’s own Dr Thomas Newsome from The University of Sydney. According to Wolf, the annual surges in climate disasters indicate that we are “now in the midst of a major climate crisis, with far worse to come if we keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them”.

The report comes five years after Ripple and colleagues published in BioScience ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice’, which was co-signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries, and 30 years since more than 1700 scientists signed the original ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity’ in 1992. The report points out that, in the time since the original warning was published, global greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 40% — and that current policies will push the planet to about 3°C of warming by 2100.

“As Earth’s temperatures are creeping up, the frequency or magnitude of some types of climate disasters may actually be leaping up,” Newsome said.

“If there are major shifts — such as decreases in greenhouse gases — we would expect the graphs to be trending away from record highs. Until this happens, the effects of climate change will only worsen.”

Image credit: Kim Bernard, OSU

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