Justin Rowlatt
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US
The Sinai base is one of the most remote places on Earth. Ten people were preparing to spend the Antarctic winter there. The extreme weather and 24-hour darkness meant they didn't expect to see another human being for six months or so. Then, an email last week claimed there'd been a violent attack. It said there'd been threats to kill, creating an environment of fear and intimidation.
Global News Podcast
Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US
Today, the South African authorities confirmed to the BBC there had been an assault. It said it followed a dispute over a weather-dependent task that required a schedule change. Now, it doesn't sound like much, but those who've spent time in Antarctica say overwintering on a base can be an incredibly intense experience. Dr Gabriel Walker is the author of a book on Antarctica.
Global News Podcast
Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US
Sources in the Antarctic community say they understand the plan is to send a team to the base to help resolve the issue. But with average temperatures of minus 23 Celsius and wind speeds of up to 135 miles an hour, getting that rescue team in is going to be very challenging. Justin Rowlatt.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
The Copernicus Climate Change Service says last year was 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Now, that makes it the first calendar year to exceed that symbolic boundary of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
That was the boundary, the target, if you like, set that the world agreed to try and stick to, recognising the science from the UN's climate science body that said there'd be significantly worse impacts from climate change, from global warming, above 1.5. Now, we haven't technically broken the target because that's a long term, a 20-year average.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
What it is telling us, though, is just how close the world is coming to doing that in the longer term. So really worrying data.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
No, the world certainly isn't. And what was particularly worrying is that climate scientists weren't expecting last year, 2024, or 2020-23 to be as hot as they were. And they're not entirely sure why. One reason may be clouds. There's some evidence that low-level clouds, the clouds that reflect the radiation back from the sun...
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
into space the heat from the sun back into space there were fewer of those clouds than there have been historically now they're not entirely sure why that is it may be because of new regulations for ship emissions or it could be to do with the nature of our changing climate if the latter is the case if fewer clouds that reflect radiation back into space are a result of climate change itself.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
We can expect a more rapid and accelerating warming trend. One of the directors of Copernicus, she said to me, we're entering a new climate era for the human species. We evolved about 300,000 years ago. This is the hottest, they can say with certainty, the hottest for more than 100,000 years. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere years.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
Yeah, we're expecting that to happen. And he could roll back climate regulations in the US. He's talked about trying to he calls it the green scam trying to unpick if you like the inflation reduction act, which was the big Biden legislation that commits hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to climate change in the US.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
And there was a new scientific paper published yesterday talking about a kind of double fingerprint of climate change in the California fires. They call it climate whiplash. Higher temperatures mean we see more heat waves and droughts that obviously we saw in the Californian summer last year. But we also see more rain. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
And that's what we saw in the two years preceding these fires. More rain in California, which allowed the vegetation to grow, the trees, shrubs, grasses to grow. When they dried out in the summer and there were no winter rains dampening them last year, then you have this dry vegetation.
Global News Podcast
2024 warmest year on record
It just takes one spark, as we've seen, the seasonal Santa Ana winds to whip those flames up, and we see the consequences unfolding in California as we speak.