The US and Israel have quit UNESCO

The United States and Israel officially quit the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural agency, the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias.

The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded by the U.S. after World War II to foster peace. The Paris-based organization has been denounced by its critics as a crucible for anti-Israel bias: blasted for criticizing Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, naming ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites and granting full membership to Palestine in 2011.

The withdrawals will not greatly impact UNESCO financially, since it has been dealing with a funding slash ever since 2011 when both Israel and the U.S. stopped paying dues after Palestine was voted in as a member state. Since then officials estimate that the U.S. — which accounted for around 22 percent of the total budget — has accrued $600 million in unpaid dues, which was one of the reasons for President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw. Israel owes an estimated $10 million.

UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay took up her post just after Trump announced the pullout. Azoulay, who has Jewish and Moroccan heritage, has presided over the launch of a Holocaust education website and the U.N.’s first educational guidelines on fighting anti-Semitism — initiatives that might be seen as responding to U.S. and Israeli concerns.

[TIME]

Warming and melting Arctic has ‘cascading effects’ around the globe

In the year 2018, surface air temperatures in the Arctic continued to warm at roughly twice the rate relative to the rest of the globe. It was the second warmest year, second only to 2016, on record in the Arctic since 1900, at +1.7 C relative to the long-term average between 1981 and 2010. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2018 Arctic Report Card was released on Tuesday, Dec. 11, at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting.

The report includes a series of 14 essays written by more than 80 scientists from 12 countries. “This report will also help guide NOAA’s priorities in better understanding the role of the Arctic in climate change and extreme weather; sustaining and growing fisheries; and supporting adaptation and economic opportunities in the region,” said Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, Ph.D., acting undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere at NOAA.

This year’s report shows that the Arctic region experienced the second-highest air temperatures ever recorded, the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage, lowest recorded winter ice in the Bering Sea and earlier plankton blooms due to early melting of sea ice in the Bering Sea. The Arctic Ocean has lost 95 percent of its oldest, thickest ice. In 2018, Arctic sea ice remained younger and thinner and covered less area than in the past.

“When I look at the report, one of the big takeaways from this year is that it really shows how interconnected things are,” Dr. Donald Perovich, professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, said at the press conference. “We’re really starting to see cascading effects that we don’t fully understand.”

[AccuWeather]

Marine heat waves, drought and heavy rains all bore the fingerprints of climate change

Climate change isn’t just exacerbating extreme weather. Some events wouldn’t happen without it, according to a major scientific report just released.

They include a marine heat wave in the Tasman Sea off the coast of Australia last year. Ocean temperatures soared 2.5 degrees Celsius (or about 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal. The record-breaking event would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, according to the report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

It’s the second year in a row that researchers found that climbing temperatures are causing events that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The report includes studies of 16 extreme weather events occurring in 2017, conducted by more than 100 scientists from around the world. In each case, the events were subjected to an attribution analysis—a special kind of study that determines whether, and to what extent, climate change has influenced an individual weather event. These attribution studies typically use models to simulate conditions with and without the existence of climate change.

This year, a majority—although not all—of the studied events were found to have been influenced by climate change.

[Scientific American]