Webinar - Fuel on Fire: Reporting El Niño and the True Costs of Climate Change

Thank you so much for joining us today. We have got a great panel and a very topical and interesting discussion um lined up for the next hour. Um I think we have quite a few more participants registered but I also don't want to lose any time for the discussion and questions ahead. So, I'm going to dive right in and introduce the purpose of today's discussion and the panelists. Um, [snorts] the fossil fuel industry is subsidized uh by taxpayers to the tune of $12 trillion a year. In fact, um, a think tank recently projected that the direct budgetary subsidies to fossil fuel companies are set to once again exceed $1 trillion this year because of the Iran energy crisis. And meanwhile, uh, ordinary people are paying three times over for the fossil system, um, through energy bills, uh, through their taxes, which go into these enormous subsidies, and of course through the escalating cost of human disasters, both the human cost and the economic cost. Right now, for example, um wildfires are burning across France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece with thousands of people needing to be evacuated. Tour to France disrupted, and that comes just weeks after a heat wave that caused over 2,000 excess deaths in one single country, France, um in the space of just a week. And uh also that attribution scientists say would have been virtually impossible. That heat wave would have been virtually impossible without climate change. I was in London um that week for climate action week where we hosted a make polluters pay event and our keynote speaker was the chief of the London fire brigade. He had to cancel at the last minute because of all the crises the emergency services were dealing with due to that heat wave. So I mean what I feel watching this unfold is not just concern, it is urgency and it's anger because we know what is causing this and we know who's profiting while everyone else pays. And what's perhaps uh worst of all is that those who are causing it knew decades before the rest of us that burning their products, fossil fuels, was going to overheat the planet. But this particular briefing today is not about that anger. It's actually about precision and making sure that the connection between the science and the cost doesn't get lost in the coverage. And that's what we're here to do today. And we have exactly the perfect people with us to help us do that. Our aim is to understand um recent advances in the attribution science um which has come a long way in recent years and to be able to link what we can now say with a fair amount of confidence about the human fingerprint on extreme weather with the economics of who actually bears the cost when the weather system is destabilized. So I'm really glad to have this panel to help us get that link right. Um and I am going to hand it over to them. Uh first of all to Davidid Faranda who is a climate physicist and the research director at the CNRS labar laborator science duple a de environment at the institute Pierre Simon Llas. Oh, apologies for that. I really massacred that one. And he's also coordinator of uh Climter, which produces on the ground attribution analysis within about 48 hours of an extreme weather event. He's also a lead author on the IPCC's next assessment report. So, if anyone can tell us with confidence how much of today's extreme weather has climate change fingerprints on it, it is Devid. Devid, over to you. Hi uh good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all who are following today's meeting and it's a pleasure for me to be here and yes u thanks a lot for the introduction um indeed I'm a climate scientist working at the topic of attribution since several years my main focus has been to extended what we can uh the kind of extreme events that we can attribute ute to greenhouse gases emissions and my particular interests are uh storms uh with focus on tropical cyclone uh the windstorm that we see also at the mid latitudes and thunderstorms and I'm um coordinating this uh consortium international airport that is called clameter clameter I will touch uh on it a little bit later but uh it's a volunt Effort from climatologists from all over the world to uh produce rapid science of on extreme events that are unfolding and that are affecting populations, ecosystem, um economy and society. And the idea is to put some numbers on the way greenhouse gases emissions are um basically fueling these extreme events and make them more intense. And um yes I think that that's uh all for the moment for me and then I will come back to the the what is El Nino and what are the elements that are important to the unfolding of this strong Elino that we are seeing and that are affecting the uh climate system but I don't see an coming backs So perhaps I can just uh extend directly into what I wanted to say about El Nino and attribution science. So if I don't know if someone else give me a feedback on that but I will then I think I will proceed then to this. So let's Yes. Okay. Yes. So I thought we were all introducing ourself first and then going to this but uh the order is a bit changed. Uh so okay then let's go into the details. Um I'm going to do a bit of this introductory part on what is El Nino and how we we do expect that is influencing the climate. And so El Nino is a phenomenon that occurs as part of the natural climate variability and it's related to a temporary warming of the tropical Pacific uh which happens almost periodically in the climate system. Let's say that we have phases of warming and phases of cooling that are called leninia as in position for elino that occur with the frequency of about 3 to five years and of course we can have warmer or cooler water depending again on on the natural variability of the climate. And um in this uh 2026 we have start with a strong what we call a strong El Nino because we have a consequent warming of the water of the tropical Pacific and actually it could be also an exceptional one uh which means that we are going to warm uh by few degrees Celsius a large part of the tropical Pacific. Now we are used to see the map of the world uh with having the Americans on our left and Australia on on and East Asia on on the right and we don't see how much the Pacific is big but actually it represent a consequent fraction of the entire planet. So when we warm the tropical Pacific by few degrees we are warming of a fraction of degrees the entire world and this warming is adding up to the that caused by greenhouse gases emissions and that let's remember they are as the an was saying before uh caused by burning fossil fuels which means gas oil and carbon and we have already 1.4° Celsius global warming caused by greenhouse gases emissions and on top of this we will add up to 0.25° Celsius at the global scale from El Nino. So it means that we have already a glass full of water that is climate change and on top of this we are adding something that is natural variability but that is also pushing up temporarily uh the thermometer to produce for the autumn and then for the winter enhanced impact from the extreme events that we're seeing in the um climate as caused by anthropogenic climate. change. So the situation right now at the onset of this Elino event as An was saying is that we have multiple heat waves uh in Europe in the United States also affecting the FIFA World Cup uh players and also supporters. uh and we have uh wildfires that are spreading even earlier than when they are observed normally in at the end of summer in many regions of Europe. These events that are not just natural extreme weather events but they are actually caused and enhanced by uh the greenhouse gases emissions. We can quantify this enhancement that is due to greenhouse gases by realizing attribution studies. So attribution I repeat it once again uh is linking the occurrence of a weather phenomena or its uh increase in intensity and frequency to the fact that we are burning fossil fuels and we can do this in an interactive way. Um there are two main um consorts that realize full attribution studies that uh there are the world weather attribution uh based uh in the UK and climter based in France. There are also other efforts at national international level by um climate central and national weather office to do these attribution studies but they basically say the same things that is all the climate uh extreme events that we're seeing now in the system in the climate system are enhanced intensified modified and made more frequent by greenhouse gases emissions. So the questions for the attribution science is not anymore to know if whether extreme events are um enhanced are intensified by climate change but just to quantify how much and we can quantify how many people how many damages and how many uh ecosystems are we losing because of greenhouse gas system emissions. So this is something that we can do rapidly and I'm I have the uh let's say I I would have say pleasure because it's uh science and so it's something interested but actually the results that we give are always negative results for the society because we see the impact of uh the extreme events. So I coordinate clam meter and the last study that we have realized uh a week ago is about the June heat wave in France and in western Europe that as you know has reached uh temperature above 40 degrees in many countries in in in Europe including France, Germany, uh Czech Republic uh of course Spain, Italy and it has been a very um uh impactful events in terms of already of uh additional stress to the health system of many countries with thousands of people who have already preliminary um attribute in terms of deaths to these events and we have realized this study that tell us that it wave is up to 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer because of climate change. We have another ongoing studies that we will release in the next few days uh about the North American heatwave h that also say that the wave has been enhanced by climate change. So the question as I said is not anymore to understand uh if but it's to understand how much these extreme events are due to climate change. We can also board weather attribution and clam meter has realized both more than 100 rapid studies that adds to the studies that we have in the peer-reviewed literature and they al show that greenhouse gases emissions are intensifying um uh these uh extreme events. When I say extreme events, I'm not only talking about heat waves. I'm talking also about wildfires. I'm talking about tropical cyclones where winds and uh precipitation especially are increased by uh burning oifu. I'm also talking about um storm that happens at the mid latitude. I'm also talking about thunderstorms. So this is the basis that we are seeing because of climate change and what we expect to see with El Nino because El Nino moves up the temperature as I was saying by this 0.1.2 two degrees. We expect more impacts globally and of course more impacts regionally uh because we know that Elino triggers uh often drought or dry condition in Southeast Asia and in Australia. We know also that it changes the precipitation pattern over North America. So that where normally it rains it will rain more and where it's dry is going to be uh even drier and also in South America and it it has also an important tendency to dry uh the southern part of Africa. So these are things that are studied but for the rest of the world there is no consensus of on how El Nino acts for example over Europe or other parts of Asia but we know that it is increase the impacts of the global warming and so we expect enhanced impacts. So we have to brace basically for um a winter and an autumn where the um all the extreme events that we have seen already announced by greenhouse gases emissions will be even more impactful and I think I will stop here for the moment and I will give the floor to the next uh speaker and of course I will be very happy to go more in details to what I've said as this introduction in the question time. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much Davidid. Um I cannot start my video. I don't know if one of the tech support can Okay. And now I can start my video. Thank you so much Davidid. Um wow 2.5 degrees hotter in the recent heat wave because of climate change. That is really striking and I think it's no exaggeration to say that that is the difference between life and death for many elderly people and people in otherwise fragile health. Um and I think you've also very vividly made the point that um with the current El Nino the we have a saying in English um that it when if you put a frog in a warm pot of water and heat it up slowly it won't notice when it starts boiling. We we are already in that boiling pot of water and El Nino is going to turn up the heat further. Our next speaker is Shell Winkley. Um he is a senior engagement specialist and the chief meteorologist at Climate Central. He spent 17 years as a broadcast meteorologist. um most of that as chief meteorologist at a CBS affiliate in Texas before moving to Climate Central where he now works directly with journalists and meteorologists to help them use attribution tools in their own reporting. And we're very glad to have him with us because he is the perfect bridge between the science and the news desk. Over to you Shell. And at the moment, >> Shell on Shell online. So maybe we could go to Amamira next if that's okay because sh I'm just trying to chase him. I don't know what's happened. >> Oh, of course. Yeah. Amira, are you ready? Great. Okay. So my my colleague Amira Ode Konius is from 350.org in the Caribbean. She is a geographer and a water resource specialist from Puerto Rico um who actually became a climate organizer in the wake of Hurricane Maria. She now works with our network um across the Caribbean and she will ground her contribution in what who pays actually looks like for communities who are on the front lines of extreme weather. um who of course are the ones who have also done the least to cause it. Over to you Amamira. >> Thank you an and thank you uh Davidid for for that introduction. Um as a scientist and also an organizer, it is very impactful to see the the state of the situation we are living in. Uh because even though um all through my life I've I've I started to join the environmental movement because of all the environmental degradation I kept seeing. It wasn't until Hurricane uh Maria um in 2017 and and all the widespread destruction that I noticed even me being like a already an environmental organizer at that time and a full believer of the like the climate crisis is real, it was still impactful for me to notice like yes, this is happening now. This is not something for us to worry about in the next decade. This is happening right now and the Caribbean is clearly on the front lines of the climate crisis. I will speak more about Puerto Rico because it's where I live, where where I'm from and uh uh what I know most of what is happening. But uh what I will speak about is an ongoing situation across all the region. So, El Nino tends to mean in the Caribbean uh fewer hurricanes due to to stronger winds. Uh but these winds also mean an altered rain pattern which leads to severe drought and on top of that there's there's warmer days in addition to to the ongoing heat and warmer seas. And uh sometimes many people think like okay Elino means fewer hurricanes wonderful but hurricanes are far from being the only um climate impact happening in our region. So uh while while we have lived through uh many of Nino phenomenons before um it is exacerbated by the climate crisis and here it's already meaning that for example in Puerto Rico uh 82% of the nation is already under drought with the government agency that distributes water already rationing water in some locations and talking about upcoming rationing in others. And water rationing is not just an inconvenience, it is a health crisis. And speaking for um my my own example, um in the last strong drought that we had in 2015 when Elino was also happening, I had water in my house just two days a week. At the time, I was living with my elderly grandparents. So it meant that they needed constant help to carry heavy buckets of water to be able to do basic house necessities. But just like my grandparents, there are an estimate of of 300,000 elderly persons in Puerto Rico and many more in the entire Caribbean because we are a region that has a lot of brain drain and most youth have to leave their countries to be able to work. So many elderly are alone and really struggle on occasions where no water is present because they can get injured. And a lot of people do get injured carrying um water up flights upstairs or they lack basic hygiene and hydration which is needed in the extreme heat that is also being felt because the past month in Puerto Rico uh most days we have had heat that goes up to a sensation of up to 43° C in some areas. Um, apart from the household issues, drought here also means millions of dollars in losses in agriculture and rationing also means large effects on small businesses that can't operate and health facilities that can't operate. So that causes many people to not have the health care they need and many families also not being able to bring money into the house all due to the climate effects that are causing this water rationing. And um speaking about heat um the the greater Antilles or the north of the Caribbean if you want to look at it that way are we are facing temperatures above 38 degrees daily. Uh this is including like places like Cuba, Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, uh Puerto Rico, and the southern Caribbean is also experiencing higher than average daytime temperatures. Uh these temperatures usually don't include the heat index mixed with the humidity. It feels like so much more. And local governments in these areas have been alerting people to watch for exhaustion signs. Stay hydrated and stay indoors. But this is not realistic for workers, people that have to be outside. uh people that need uh care support and people lacking water and people suffering from power power outages which are very common in places like Kuba and here in Puerto Rico. Um, as an organizer for for the 350 Caribbean network, um, our uh, network members have been mentioning in the past meetings constantly how the heat is causing headaches, how the heat is affecting their capacity to work, how it's causing issues with elderly people that they take care of. So they have been spending more time with their parents or grandparents in emergency rooms. And it is also affecting parents of young children to be able to enjoy the life outside the house. Because while in many parts of the world, the summer is meaning a space to finally come outside and catch the sun and enjoy nature. In the Caribbean, in the past years, it has started to mean the time of the year to stay inside. Uh, close your windows, turn on your air conditioner if if if you have the privilege to have one, turn on your fans, stay hydrated, and hope for the best. Uh so with with drought and excessive heat uh it also comes uh uh to fact the reality of the deni fever outbreaks and other mosquitob born diseases that tend to happen in the region because either rivers are not flowing uh so water gets stuck in there or water shortages force people to have to store water in household containers, creating the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry this disease. And um on top of that, warmer temperatures tend to shorter the mosquitoes incubation period. So that accelerates transmission rates. And every time we have deni sika or shinkongja outbreaks um the people that are most at risk and the people that end up most in emergency rooms are children and elderly who are always the the groups in the population that that face the most consequences. And apart from from these main things related to heat and drought when El Nino happens um uh warmer seas also happens. So that means that um sargasm affects several parts of the Caribbean. When uh when the sea is too hot uh we get a lot of sargasm more than average. So, at least in Puerto Rico, but this also happens in many more places, it means that some beaches are not safe to swim in because of large quantities of sargasm. So, it's extremely hot. The rivers are not flowing and people can't even cool down at the beach because the water starts to smell bad. It's not safe. It affects your skin. It affects your lungs. And this also affects tourism in many communities. And unfortunately um over decades the governments across the region have designed a dependency of on tourism. A dependency that whenever tourism is affected by anything, it end ups it ends up costing families their their income. And sargasm also causes damage to to fishers, to boats, to nests, uh to nets. So, um it just ends up costing people more money for for equipment, less availability of fish, and just in general cost uh cost costing the the livelihoods and the incomes of families for many many many reasons. While the Caribbean is a place that while there are two countries that do extract fossil fuels, uh, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, it's still the minority of the extraction is the the minority of the population if we look at it at a global scale and and the minority of of um uh CO2 emissions that that have been caused lo due due to this region. Uh yet we are we are facing some of the worst impacts. Uh and I will leave it there and and listen to the questions later on. Pass it back to you an >> thank you Amamira. What what I really loved about your contribution is that often when we hear about the economic cost of uh climate impacts, we hear about the headline figures, you know, the billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure or percentage points uh from GDP. And what often we don't hear is is the impact on preexisting inequalities which in a way I think is one of the most insidious economic impacts of climate change that poverty, gender inequality, racial inequality, all of those things. There's ample research showing that climate impacts are making that much worse. And of course that does ultimately translate back into lower productivity across the whole economy. Um but you raised in particular the issue of water and and we know that responsibility for collecting water falls heavily on women across the global south and that is hours um out of every day and every week that they are not able to devote to earning income. So it makes women worse off. It makes their families worse off. It ultimately makes the whole economy worse off because that is an opportunity cost all that time spent collecting water as as well as the health impacts that you outlined um so articulately. Thank you Amamira. And I'm now going to pass back to Shell who I have already introduced. So straight over to you Shell. >> Yeah, sorry about that. Zoom decided to uh have a moment and that's okay. It just it just makes things more exciting here. Yeah. Howdy, friends. My name is Shell Winkley. I am the chief meteorologist and senior engagement specialist with Climate Central. If you're unfamiliar with us, we are a non- advocacy nonprofit. Really, we're just a a group of um data and science and weather nerds, um who are really good at that part of it. But we know that we can give resources so that we can localize the storytelling so we can really make it understandable for everybody. We're good at the science and the data. you're really good at making it known um and and making those connections in your community. So, uh I think that this might have been said earlier. I'm a former broadcast meteorologist. I made the joke earlier that I don't know how to talk without um at least a few graphics. So, I'm going to share just a few things. And what I really want to hone in on today is how we can use what we heard from uh Dvid as well as Amira. Basically, how we can take this science and turn it into why it matters for everybody. So the first place I'll start here is really understanding and this isn't anything novel you may have seen this already uh in different shapes or forms but what we know is that you know between these El Nino which inherently raise the global temperature as is even without climate change inside of it and then the leninia years which usually mean cooler than average temperatures globally but even our leninia years which help to try to drag down that global temperature with climate change we understand that even those years are now much warmer than the El Nino years that we experienced just a couple of decades ago. So that is why you know yes El Nino is going to be a big part of the story as we go through the next year or so. But we know that climate change really is the big thing here. The way I like to put it is that the baseline temperature is kind of like a plate. Climate change is the cake and then El Nino is essentially the frosting on top that's raising that temperature a little bit more. So I want to focus on oceans um because I think that's really where the big story is right now. So looking at that El Nino Enso region along the equatorial Pacific, we know that the white line that's this year, the lighter blue teal line that is 2023. That was the record year. Um and we know that for this time of the year, maybe it's not the all-time record, but for this time of the year, that region is at record levels. And that's why we are 100% confident that El Nino is not only happening, but it's likely going to be a major historic El Nino that we've never experienced before. Now, globally, when we look at oceans, again, that teal line is the record um from 2024. And as you can see, at this point of the year, not the all-time record, but for the beginning of July, we are above where we typically see or where we've really even ever seen temperatures globally at this time of the year. So essentially every single basin is having a moment. Um and every single basin is essentially is a big bathtub that is adding to the extreme weather and the extreme heat that we're feeling. So kind of building on what uh we talked about with climate work and attribution science, the way we do it here at climate central, we want to be able to make this fingerprint daily. So we have what we call the climate shift index. Couple different variations and I'll show you how you can use it, but this is the climate shift index ocean. So, we're basically putting a fingerprint on climate change on sea surface temperatures. A scale goes from -1,000 to 1,000. And you'll see looking globally that most of the basins in uh the world are experiencing not only excessive heat, but excessive heat that is made more likely because of climate change. Now, we are US-based and I have a couple US um graphics to show you kind of how you can tie this together into your storytelling. So, I want to focus on the Gulf of Mexico. Again, like the theme that we've talked about here, 2023 was the record year for the Gulf of Mexico. Not only are we exceptionally above average in terms of sea surface temperatures there, but for the beginning of July, we are also hotter than we have been since at least 1980, since the satellite era began um here in the basin at this time of the year. And so using that attribution science, we really see a big signal here on the eastern side of the Gulf of Mexico. That really extends past the Bahamas into the Atlantic. Um where sea surface temperatures have been made anywhere from 100 to 500 times more likely because of human caused climate change. So we're talking about on the Fahrenheit scale, sea surface temperatures that are running 2 1/2 to 3 1/2° above average. At this time of the year, we're close to 90° F. So if a tropical system were to wander into this region, there is a lot of juice there, there is a lot that these storms can grab that energy and quickly become something that is not typical. Basically turning something that is a natural disaster, which is a tropical system into something unnatural because we know that these hurricanes feed off that warmth. Now looking at the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, we ran these numbers yesterday. 46.4% 4% of it is experiencing a marine heat wave and about half of that so half of the basin generally is experiencing a marine heat wave and about half of that marine heat wave is more likely or has a fingerprint of climate change. So how do we put this into our storytelling? Because for someone that's maybe inland or doesn't really see the ocean every day, they may not think that's a big deal. They may not care about it. But we start at the basics, which is that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. So the easiest way to see that is with heavier rainfall, but it's also how we feel it, right? You need a weather system to unlock that rainfall. But a lot of us are walking around in not only excessive heat for this time of the year that's made more likely by climate change, but also what we call dangerous humid heat. So they always say, you know, it's not the heat, it's the humidity. So we know that climate change has more than doubled uh the humid heat days globally since just the 1970s. And using attribution science, we know with confidence that that is primarily due to the heat trapping pollution that we've put into the atmosphere. Um, here in the United States across 247 cities, 65% of human heat days, we now experience about 19 more per year that are directly tied that have a strong fingerprint of climate change. So again, have about a two times more likely um ability because of climate change. And then we say why that matters, right? Your body can't cool down as easily when we have this big humid air mass around us. Your sweat doesn't work. Your natural air conditioner in your body doesn't work as well. We have a lot of folks, especially here in the States, who will say, "Well, it's summertime. You know, I'm in Texas, right?" So, they're like, "It's always humid. It's always hot." Yes, but this is a level that is different. This isn't the summers that we experienced a couple decades ago that our parents and our grandparents experienced. So really helping draw those connections especially for our families, for our mothers, for our kids, for our elderly. Help them understand our outdoor workers why this is different and why it matters. And what you thought you knew about heat and humidity is different now because of climate change. The other big piece of that here in the states um you know when we talk about heat waves, we think a lot about the afternoon heat because it's what we walk around in. Nighttime temperatures during the summer months, June, July, August, are warming almost twice as fast as daytime temperatures. And a lot of that is tied to the amount of moisture we're holding on to. Dry air cools down faster than humid air. On average, nighttime temperatures through these three months have warmed by over 3° Fahrenheit in the United States. And we again can use that attribution science to know about a month of the extra warmer than average nights have a strong fingerprint of climate change. And we can show that localized by city to show you in the 1970s there are a few nights that were added that were a little bit different because of climate change. But now in the city of Miami, just about a majority of the summertime is experienced warmer than typical nights that are made more likely. And that's really important for folks that are unhomed or don't have adequate air conditioning or don't have the means to run their air conditioning 24 hours a day because nighttime is when your body should recuperate from the day's heat and get ready. And it's that compounding nighttime daytime heat that leads to that heat stress, leads to that heat stroke, leads to the heat fatalities that we experience. So I'm going to hold this here for just a second. The lefthand side is our climate shift index that will get you there. Um we can drop these links in the chat. And then the right hand side we put out weekly uh releases um every single week that talks about a different climate change uh topic, solutions, trend lines, whatever it might be. Um so we drop those into your chat every week. And then I'm going to share just one more thing um very quickly which is the climate shift index. So, just to show you what it looks like, um, we'll pull it up here. So, this is our climate shift index page, csi.climates central.org. We can do this in three ways. We can do this with um, land temperatures. So, we can look globally every single day, and you can even forecast out um, a certain number of days if you know a big heat wave is coming to see when you walk outside, is that heat made more likely because of climate change? Yeah, it is in most cases. We can see in Florida, the East Coast, a lot of Africa, and especially this heatwave 3.0 that's happening across our European countries. Um, up here in the left hand side, we've got a toggle. This brings you over to the ocean temperatures like we were talking about. So, you can zoom in, you can look at the different areas. If you right click on a map, so we'll right click on the Gulf of Mexico, you can get all the information that you need in terms of how much warmer than average, um how much more likely it is because of climate change. With this as well, if we have a tropical system in the Atlantic basin, you can turn this on. You can look at past storms as well, um and understand is a hurricane being impacted by climate change. Is it roaming over waters that are more likely because of climate change? And then um in this whirlwind toural we also have a humid heat that we just launched this year. So again focusing on the United States you can see that most of the humid heat that's being experienced in Texas the Gulf Coast region to Florida. That pink color basically means that we would not have experienced dangerous humid heat today um if it wasn't for rather this is June 17th because we pulled up that hurricane. Um but we wouldn't have experienced that without climate change. And then you can look at that signal, get those numbers as well. So again, air temperature, ocean temperatures, humid heat temperatures, and one last piece for you, the screenshot map right here. If you want to bring this into your storytelling, we have KML versions for all of this. But maybe you're looking to talk about this on social media or put it into some of your online digital work. Um, you can grab these images in social media, in landscape form, and what's I think one of the more important places we can do storytelling today, which is in a in a vertical form, so that you can tell those stories on social media in short form videos as well. So, I'll leave it there and I'll pass it on and we can answer questions a little bit later. Thanks, Shell. Wow, that ability to drill down to individual states and cities is just fantastic. Um, I'm already imagining how I can use it to win arguments in the bar with [laughter] with my neighbors who who say, "No, this isn't anything, you know, this has been going on for a long time. This is nothing unusual." Um, that that is truly amazing. Thanks so much for that. Our last speaker is Gareth Redmond King who's the head of the international program at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. He leads their international work translating climate and energy data into clear and credible analysis for journalists and policy makers and he's been one of the most quoted voices on the recent European heat waves human and economic cost. So over to you Gareth. >> Thank you very much. Um so uh on costs then um which is what I'm going to be talking about um an has actually uh made my first point um for me already at the highest level we often talk about these costs at at the sort of global level or the the economy level and and for example the UK institute and faculty of acttories who are people who uh skilled in uh analyzing risk they calculate that current climate policies uh are probably taking us towards uh cutting global GDP in half by uh later this century. um the climate financial risk forum, another group of financial uh risk assessors, they reckon a combined nature and climate shock scenario could see GDP shrink by between 15 and 20% over as little as 5 years. And this is at a time, of course, as we've been hearing, that we're we we we we're firmly in a position, firmly in shock territory. We have climate change plus the second fossil fuel crisis in less than 5 years, plus an extreme uh El Nino brewing. Um and this you know national security experts around the world certainly recently in the UK they have been warning about this uh and the risk of this uh for some time. Um these are projections but also GDP hits uh are global or economywide and average they don't hit everywhere equally. Um, the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, found in 2024 that African nations are already losing uh between two and 5% of their GDP every year to the costs of climate impacts. And that's on top of uh having to spend up to 9% of their budgets to address and respond to the impacts of those extremes. So in some of the poorest nations on the planet, ones collectively responsible for less than 10% of the emissions that are driving climate change, the choice is increasingly between uh paying for public services or dealing with the losses and damages caused by climate change extremes. But as I say, GDP is big for most of us. It's pretty abstract. Um it's perhaps more for chancellors and prime ministers. At the more tangible level, how do these costs actually kind of manifest for people? Um so we're we're in a cost of living crisis uh everywhere and as overall inflation uh has risen um over recent years food has become one of the the largest drivers. I'm going to talk a bit about the UK situation because that's where I'm based. That's where we do our analysis. Um so in the UK uh we import two-fifths of our food from overseas. Most of it is food we can't grow here for obvious reasons. things like rice, bananas, tea, coffee, large parts of the fruit and veg that we consume. So it's not just climate impacts that uh happen here uh that affect us and put the put that uh cost onto food. It's it's climate impacts happening in Pakistan uh in in India, in Brazil, in Vietnam, in Colombia, in Kenya, the places that we import the food from. Uh and climate change impacts in those countries are increasingly the drivers uh of food price rises. extreme heat, drought, floods, climate enabled crop disease. Uh they've all delayed planting and disrupted harvests across major producing regions around the world from Spain to India to South America as well as at home. Uh last year uh England saw its second worst harvest on record. Three of the five worst uh have been this decade. Uh last year's after a particularly warm dry spring and summer. The year before after a particularly extreme wet winter which was made 20% more likely uh as a result of climate change. 20% heavier rather as a result of climate change. So prices uh have risen by about 40% since the start of the cost of living crisis here in the UK which is about mid 2021. And then across 2022 and 2023, climate change has added around £360 to the average UK household food bill. Um fossil fuel price instability chucked another £240 uh on top of that as well. And we can see that a group of uh everyday staples, a group of just five everyday staples is responsible for much of that inflation uh accounting for just 11% of the average shopping basket but for about 30 to 40% of the actual food inflation. And those are climate hit foods. Those are coffee which we import in the UK from Brazil and Vietnam. Chocolate which we and the whole of the rest of the world largely imports from Kivoir and Ghana. places that have seen uh sharp rises in in these are these are foods that have seen sharp rises in prices uh as extremes have hit. Those are climate change extremes but 23 24 they were very clearly turbocharged by uh El Nino as well ruining harvests and pushing prices skyhigh. The other three of the five um that are having the biggest impact, beef, butter and milk, uh heavily reliance on imported feed, which is mostly soy, beans, which we import principally from Brazil, but also from the US. Those five peaked at 16% uh inflation in July last year, whereas overall food inflation was 2.6%. So, we can very clearly see climate change absolutely at the heart of the cost of living crisis, the the price we pay to feed ourselves. And and as with any part of this story, uh the poorest are of course hit hardest by price rises like this. It's not just about what climate does to crops. Uh it's also uh about the people um who produce the food. Across the 15 top supplying countries um to the UK, that's from amongst the countries most vulnerable and least resilient uh to climate change. Heat stress uh cost agricultural workers billions of lost hours across those countries. billions of lost hours of work in 2024. On average, nearly 50 days uh almost per worker. Working outdoors in extreme heat is extremely dangerous. And again uh it's the poorest who are hit hit hardest uh by lost earnings uh lost productivity, lost food production, lost export revenue if you're a food producer. All hitting farmers, companies uh and the economies um of those countries. also hitting food supplies within those countries as well as the growing risk to for the UK's purposes between 11 and 13% of our um food imports. In Pakistan um a country heavily reliant on agriculture uh disasters have displaced huge numbers of people uh over recent years often from countryside to city. Um some of the migration is temporary and people go back to their homes after uh the disaster is over but in 2023 1.2 two million people. Uh the country had the highest number of displaced people anywhere in the world and it has a higher than average level uh of rural to urban migration. So climate disasters kill people uh destroy crops um and damage infrastructure in the short term, but in the medium term they're building bigger risks into uh into our global food system. They they're driving more and more people away from uh from rural areas and therefore from agriculture, a further threat to food supply. um food supply chains and food security and the cost of food everywhere. We've long known uh that the impacts of climate change cost us far more than the solutions. We know that providing climate finance to help nations to uh adapt is in all our interests in terms of global stability. But uh also uh in each nation's own interests, self-interests in terms of uh food security. But above all um we know uh we can do nothing about El Nino. But we know that we have only one scientific solution uh to to halting climate change um the underlying problem which is to cut our emissions to uh net zero. So I will stop there. >> Thank you Gareth. very stirring words and appropriate words to conclude the panel part of of our uh session today on and I have to say that living in southern Africa the uh the impacts of climate change on food security and the broader economy are painfully painfully visible. Um and the the longer term impacts that you know a child growing up even a child in the womb who doesn't receive adequate nutrition in the womb faces a whole lifetime of health problems and reduced productivity and earnings. Um so this is impacting not just the current generation um growing up in southern Africa but future generations as well. and it's literally an incalculable impact and thank you for putting that all so clearly and powerfully. Um, we have just a few minutes for questions from the panel. Again, I'm encouraging people to use the chat function for that. And I think we have a first one already um from Zachi uh which is um and I think this is for Dvidday is is climate change making it difficult for science to predict how longestablished weather patterns such as ENSO the El Nino southern oscillation which is I I believe that's the oscillation between Lan Nino and El Nino cooling and heating Is it is that making it harder to predict how those weather patterns will behave? >> Yes, thanks a lot for this question. That also let me say that we don't know actually if El Nino and Leninia so the oscillation is influenced itself by climate change. It could be and there are studies that support the fact that we are going towards more elino cycle than leninia although there is no consensus on this but it it is actually possible and we would expect naturally that as any other elements of the climate system also elino leninia are influenced by climate change. So this Elino that we are starting to live now as I was saying in the forecast is exceptional in in the sense that we could go beyond that everything that we have actually measured in terms of intensity of El Nino and this could be related to climate change and this of course is pushing the climate models also to the edge of what they could uh predict. So the things that we're saying is that the climate models can predict already very bad impacts on the um climate system and therefore to the on the ecosystems and on our society and if and what we are living now as year 2026 is already on the edge of the worst prediction that we can make with climate model for the current climate. So we should I I join an and all the other um panelists that have say that we should take this as a message for the urgency to take actions against climate change now to reduce fossil fuel emissions because we know that it can even be worse than what we are currently predicting because we are on the edge of we are could predict with the models. >> Thank you. Uh, and then a question from I'm not sure how to pronounce the name, my apologies. Kaiser or Kaiser, a reporter for Business World in the Philippines. And I'm going to direct this one to Gareth because it's more policyoriented. Um, we see AI's uh energy consumption um increasing exponentially in places like the US and increasingly in Europe and now starting in Asia as well. um how is that likely to affect emissions and climate change? And more importantly, what what can governments do to reduce that potential impact on on our carbon footprint and therefore climate impacts? >> Yeah, I mean there's there's very clearly a global race for um there's very clearly a global race to sort of be the leaders on AI and um to develop the the the best models and um corner the market. um uh and we're you know we're seeing we're seeing that everywhere and we're seeing um very interesting kind of uh community level push back on a lot of that for precisely the reasons that that sit behind your question. Um, you know, the short answer is that if we uh expand the use of a technology, a power- hungry technology like AI very quickly, um, without changing our power system, then yes, we're going to keep adding more and more greenhouse gases into the system as we continue to rely on, uh, gas or in some parts of the world still coal um, to generate that power. But I mean, this is this is where this is where China um, is is gaining the edge. Look at the speed with which the rate and the speed at which China is deploying renewables and indeed um growing its market selling renewables around the world. This is going to give it an edge for those data centers if it is able to um to run those data centers uh off renewables. Whereas the US curiously at a time when they want to expand and compete with China and be the leaders on AI are busy trying to sabotage um large renewable power. Um indeed the government, the federal government is paying companies to stop building um onshore and offshore wind. So I mean the the answer to is there a way for AI not to make this problem worse is speeding up the transition to clean power. About 40% of our power globally comes from uh clean sources. Now the faster that speeds up, the less AI poses a risk. And for part two of your question, I don't think it uh affects Elino. Elino is natural. We can't do anything about El Nino. the fact that El Nino will keep on coming is our incentive to do something very urgently i.e. net zero um to tackle climate change. >> Thank you Gareth. That's really helpful. Um, and I also want to to preview that uh 350US um is going to be campaigning for uh better data center energy and water use policies um launching launching very soon because we we agree that this is one of the main factors determining the future of the energy transition um at this moment. We have just a few minutes left and I want to give each of our panelists 60 seconds to share one thing that they think it's really important for journalists to take away from today's suggest uh today's session and I'm going to start with you Amamira and then I'll go to Michelle uh Devidita and Gareth. Um, I just want to say that the climate effects are are not just an inconvenience. They are not just something that's uncomfortable for you for a while. It's it's a humanitarian issue and it's threatening millions of lives and we need to take action now. We need to mitigate and we need to take serious adaptation measures. governments in the Caribbean region need just not to sit and wait to see what the global north does, but they need to protect their people now. And the countries that are really causing this need to stop this because millions of lives are at risk daily due to this. >> Thank you Sh. >> Yeah, I think I would add, you know, everything that you heard today from my great co- panelists here uh I think is spot on, right? So we know through research that for a lot of countries around the world, we don't have to convince people necessarily that climate change is happening. A majority of people know, we just need to help connect the dots of why it matters to them. Um, and so I think think about that like every story that we're going to come across, whether it is what Gareth talked about with an energy story or a money story or what Amira talked about when it comes to health or what you're seeing, you know, in your communities. Um, water is going to be a huge thing. We're a water planet. So really just adding those pieces in. And it doesn't have to be a climate change piece fully every single time. Maybe that's not your full beat, but there's a lot of moments where you can drop these little nuggets in using attribution, um, using a stat here and there. And I like to use as like a drip method because those little moments where you're just connecting the dots, that gets the wheels turning and keeps it in the back of folks mind. And that adds up over time. And I think that really helps start our conversations and can help us continue to work on climate change collectively. >> Thank you, Sh. >> Yes, I will build on what Shell was saying. I think that climate change now is affecting the lives of all human beings on earth and probably will prevent a normal life for all the children that are now living their childhood at this time in the world. If we don't stop greenhouse gases emissions, it will prevent a normal life for most of the children of this world. And so when you can get the message through your story and when you think that you can make a subject that is related to I don't know what's going on with the war, what's going on with other things of the society that certainly are important. Remember that climate change is affecting us all. I talk now in France. I'm scared of what France is leaving now. It's a catastrophic event with millions of peoples affected but also millions of trees will die. Everything is yellow here. There are fires. Animals are dying. It's a catastrophic events. It doesn't go as much as it needs in the media. It doesn't get the attention from the people that it should. Please bring this attention to the people. Bring it out there because we need also that the journalist connects with us. We have the numbers if if you want but it it is urgent to do it it now and it's now or never really to solve these problems that the world is facing. So please help us. >> Absolutely 100%. Thank you Gareth. >> Uh yes I mean I would go back to a point somebody made earlier about you know the the push back that sometimes comes that in the US that this is just summer. Um, this is not just summer uh anymore. You know, we're past the point of showing people having fun in the sun um when temperatures are at the extremes that they are now. This is extreme weather. It is reckoned that the heat waves over the recent weeks killed 20,000 people um in Europe. Um and you know, the costs and risks as we've talked about various of us and and as we hear over and over again are borne by the poorest and most vulnerable. Not just the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the world, although that certainly, but also the poorest and most v vulnerable in rich societies as well. A and just finally again, we can't do anything about El Nino. It keeps coming. Um but the underlying risk is the continuing burning of oil, coal, and gas. And as we continue to do that and we continue fueling climate change, um we just make it more and more dangerous. The only solution we have is to cut our emissions to net zero. >> Thank you, Gareth. And thank you all. Thanks to the participants for joining us. I think we have there has been no major social or political change in the 20th century without good journalism and without strong public interest reporting. Uh and we need your help. Uh so many of the institutions of democracy are under attack in many places around the world including science and academia and in many many places. Um public interest journalism is one of the last lines of defense and we are really counting on you to help us get the facts out there so that people can take action and press their elected leaders for better choices. Thank you all. Have a good evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you are in the world and we look forward to working with you more in the future.