Impact of extreme warming in the fall of 2023 on a Barbados coral. Above: Healthy A prolifera in the “Mother Colony” on Vauxhall Reff on April 3, 2023. Below the same A prolifera dead and covered with algae on Jan 12, 2024. No recovery evident in early 2025. The yellow zooanthid at left remains healthy, however.
So reads the headline for a Feb 7 post by Chris Hatch in the National Observer (Canada) Zero Carbon Newsletter.
…despite conditions that should have cooled things down, Earth hit its hottest January in recorded history.
We’ve been on a run of record-setting temperatures ever since June 2023 when global heating suddenly kicked up a gear. Scientists are still trying to figure out what’s happening — why the last two years were so inexplicably hot and 2024 broke through the symbolic figure of 1.5 degrees above temperatures before the industrial revolution. The worry is that all this fossil fuel burning has unleashed an unexpected step change in the climate system.
