A global temperature review of 2024 confirms the trend that has been so concerning to climatologists. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record, and 2024 has been the warmest yet. The European Copernicus calculation measured 2024 as 1.6°C above the pre-industrial temperature, with most days being above the 1.5°C aspirational target set by the Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015. Other organizations measured a slightly different temperature for 2024: NASA at 1.47°C, NOAA at 1.46°C, and Berkley Earth at 1.62°C. The differences are technical but the trend is the same. Global temperatures are rising in concert with our greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: Uninhabitable – Part 1Tag Archives: NOAA
On the Threshold of a 1.5°C World

While there is some disagreement as to whether we have crossed the 1.5°C threshhold set at COP 21 in Paris, scientists agree that we are on the brink and 2024 was the hottest year on record.
At COP 29 last November, Jim Skea, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained, “Children born today will not know a world without climate change. The IPCC has shown that we, and furthermore they, will live in a world marked by more intense storms, exceptional heatwaves, devastating floods and droughts, a world where food chains are disrupted, and where diseases reach new countries.”
Continue reading On the Threshold of a 1.5°C WorldScientists eavesdropping on fish to fathom their underwater secrets

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
New technology is allowing researchers to covertly monitor, record and identify the sounds fish make underwater to try to unravel their deepest secrets.
Researcher Xavier Mouy, a recent PhD graduate at the University of Victoria, and his colleagues have devised a relatively low-cost portable audio-visual system that surreptitiously records the surprising range of acoustics fish produce, but more importantly, pinpoints what creature makes which sound.
Continue reading Scientists eavesdropping on fish to fathom their underwater secretsKelp forests, foundational to coastal ecosystems and Nuu-chah-nulth culture, are at risk

By Alexandra Mehl, Ha-Shilth-Sa, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Thriving in cool water temperatures, kelp forests cover over a quarter of the world’s coastlines, with Canada having the longest, says Marissa Ng, Seaforestation Project Coordinator for Ocean Wise.
Of Canada’s 243,042-kilometre long coastline, British Columbia makes up 25,725.
“In the Pacific Northwest, kelp forests are a foundation species. Similar to salmon, they’re important for the health of the coastal ecosystem,” said Ng. “They’re also foundation species because they’re so abundant up and down the coast and much like forests on land, marine forests – kelp forest – they provide food and shelter for thousands of marine species.”
Continue reading Kelp forests, foundational to coastal ecosystems and Nuu-chah-nulth culture, are at riskA type of Orca: the big game hunter of the sea
National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
There’s a type of killer whale that prowls deeper waters and specializes in hunting big game, research by a B.C. scientist suggests.
West Coast residents are familiar with the well-known and iconic chinook salmon-eating endangered southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, and the more numerous Bigg’s killer whales, or transient orcas, that ply the shallower waters of B.C.’s coast and inlets in search of seals and other sea mammals.
But evidence indicates there’s a newly identified type of orca — outer coast killer whales — that are a distinct subgroup of transient whales, and which frequent the ocean depths along the continental shelf off the coast of central California and Oregon, said lead author Josh McInnes, a scientist with the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia.
Continue reading A type of Orca: the big game hunter of the sea