For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it’s ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.
“It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.
Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.
He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.
Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris’ resounding defeat as his loss too.
As Democrats pick up the pieces after President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory, some of the vice president’s backers are expressing frustration that Biden’s decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite long-standing voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s surrender of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Biden will leave office after leading the United States out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will affect communities for years to come.
The Professional Women’s Hockey League unveiled the home and away uniform designs for its six teams on Thursday, a little over three weeks before opening its second season.
The uniforms were made and supplied by Bauer, and their release comes two months after the PWHL revealed the nicknames and logos of each its franchises. Crests of the logos are prominently displayed on the front of the jerseys, with complementary striping and motifs blending in each team’s colors.
The long-anticipated names and logos arrived after time constraints — the league was founded in late June 2023 and began play on Jan. 1 — led to the PWHL spending its inaugural season referring to each team with a PWHL prefix, such as PWHL Minnesota, which won the first Walter Cup championship in May.
The Minnesota Frost’s home jersey is dark purple and features the team’s “F” logo with light purple accents.
Megan Farrell can be reached at farr9505@stthomas.edu.