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Speaker 1: The planet's warning lights are flashing red. A new State

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Speaker 1: of the Global Climate report by the World Meteorological Association

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Speaker 1: shows that Earth's energy system is now more out of

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Speaker 1: balance than at any other point in recorded history. In

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Speaker 1: simple terms, far more heat is entering the planet than

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Speaker 1: leaving it, and that excess energy is building up at

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Speaker 1: an alarming rate. And what's particularly concerning is where the

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Speaker 1: heat is going. More than ninety percent of it is

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Speaker 1: being absorbed by the oceans, effectively masking the full extent

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Speaker 1: of global warming at the surface. Joining us now to

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Speaker 1: unpack this is Professor Ruloff Berger, climatologist at Northwest University. Ruloff,

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Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Good afternoon, Good afternoon.

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Speaker 1: I'm assuming you had sight of this report which emerged

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Speaker 1: over the weekend, just talking about that severe imbalance in

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Speaker 1: the Earth's energy.

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Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And the scary thing is that this is

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Speaker 2: not just one report. If you monitor research, there's been

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Speaker 2: many many papers over the last few years that have

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Speaker 2: said exactly that, looking at this problem from different angles

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Speaker 2: and arriving at the same conclusion that the energy balance

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Speaker 2: is as more than doubled in the last five years.

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Speaker 1: The fact that the ocean is absorbing so much of

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Speaker 1: this excess heat. Maybe it may be protecting us on

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Speaker 1: the surface of the land, but surely it'll have far

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Speaker 1: reaching consequences.

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Speaker 2: It does, right, because it's got massive impacts on ocean biodiversity.

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Speaker 2: There's also these huge dead zones that's appearing. So apart

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Speaker 2: from the fact that this is now sort of buffering

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Speaker 2: us from the worst impacts, we don't know if this

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Speaker 2: will hold into the future. At some point some of

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Speaker 2: this energy might be relief back into the atmosphere, and

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Speaker 2: then the other impacts will will enhance.

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Speaker 1: What is it doing to marine life and other you know,

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Speaker 1: other sort of ecosystems in the sea.

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Speaker 2: We see that so there's a double impact. The one

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Speaker 2: is the warming of the oceans, which is warmed very

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Speaker 2: significantly in the last decade. But then there's also the

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Speaker 2: increased absorption of carbon dioxide, which which poses a threat

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Speaker 2: to most of these shell like a marine life. So

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Speaker 2: so these systems face face pressures from from from all

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Speaker 2: of these and we see we've seen record levels of

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Speaker 2: coral bleaching and as I mentioned, these areas of dead

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Speaker 2: life where where life seems to be struggling.

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Speaker 1: Now this world Meteorological Organization, which is a body of

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Speaker 1: the United Nations, has warned that the rate of ocean

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Speaker 1: warming has more than doubled over the past two decades.

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Speaker 1: If that continues, I mean, where's where's the end point?

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Speaker 1: When do we get to the point when it's just

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Speaker 1: too much the ocean cannot handle the heat.

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Speaker 2: So, of course today's World Meteorological Day. So maybe go

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Speaker 2: in sides for the release of this report. Maybe I

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Speaker 2: should just explain to listeners the good analogy is of

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Speaker 2: thinking Earth like a bathtub, and the sun that's coming

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Speaker 2: in is like the open tap, and the drain is

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Speaker 2: the heat escaping back to space. And at the moment,

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Speaker 2: the tap is running faster than that the drain can handle,

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Speaker 2: and the tub is actually filling. So what we're talking

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Speaker 2: about is at some point we hoping that the new

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Speaker 2: balance will be established and that the full bathtub this

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Speaker 2: energy will then become back in balance. But because there's

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Speaker 2: this imbalance, it shows it's like a harbingers. We have

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Speaker 2: not experienced the full impact of this imbalance yet, but

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Speaker 2: it's telling us that all our efforts to curb climate

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Speaker 2: change is failing and that we are likely looking at

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Speaker 2: much more impacts and increases in heat in the atmosphere

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Speaker 2: and on the surface.

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Speaker 1: Going forward, if all attempts to curb climate change are failing,

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Speaker 1: as you say, is it still possible to stabilize the system.

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Speaker 2: It is a very big question, and there's increasingly people

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Speaker 2: that say that we won't be able to do this

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Speaker 2: without engineering interventions. And you'll see that there's a lot

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Speaker 2: of these geo engineering proposals on the table. They are

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Speaker 2: still being frowned upon and they ethically difficult to swallow,

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Speaker 2: but it is increasingly likely that our only solution is

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Speaker 2: dure engineering.

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Speaker 1: Well, Livia there, thank you very much for joining us.

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Speaker 1: Professor rulof Berger as a climatologist at North University and

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Speaker 1: today is a World Meteorological Day, so he's talking to

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Speaker 1: us about that report the UN warning that we're in

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Speaker 1: a very severe state of energy imbalance in the Earth

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Speaker 1: at the moment.