Former federal climate experts warn that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations hit a record high in May and that the monthly average global temperature this summer could rise as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.9 degrees Celsius) above the pre-industrial benchmark used to measure the heating from greenhouse gases.
Research shows human-caused warming will contribute significantly to deadly heat waves, intensified storms and wildfires, atmospheric scientist Zack Labe said as he opened a Tuesday briefing by a team of experts with Climate Central, a nonprofit research and communications organization based in Washington, D.C.
Labe and several other members of the Climate Central team are former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. They decided to provide public monthly climate updates after NOAA, citing Trump administration budget cuts, canceled its briefings last year. Climate Central’s monthly briefings are part of a larger effort to ensure useful climate information remains available to the public as the current administration tries to erase the topic from government records.
Several other research groups, including Berkeley Earth and Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, also provide monthly public climate updates with data collected from global climate monitoring networks.
