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New data from the U.S. government shows that 2022 was one of the top 10 hottest years on record.
Last year was the warmest on record when there was a La Niña trade winds pattern, which generally has a cooling effect on global temperatures.
What’s clear is that global temperatures are rising and “those trends are consistent and coherent over decades now,” said Gavin A. Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “And those trends are due to our activities — predominantly because of the increase in carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.”

Electrical transmission towers at a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) electrical substation during a heatwave in Vacaville, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. California narrowly avoided blackouts for a second successive day even as blistering temperatures pushed electricity demand to a record and stretched the state’s power grid close to its limits.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

New data from the U.S. government shows that 2022 was one of the top 10 hottest years on record, with data going back to 1880. And of particular note, it was the warmest on record when there was a La Niña trade winds pattern, which generally has a cooling effect on global temperatures.
On Thursday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their global average temperature data. NOAA’s methodology found 2022 to be the sixth-warmest year on record since 1880 and NASA’s methodology found it to be the fifth warmest, tied with 2015.

According to both NOAA and NASA scientists, global temperatures were about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above their respective baseline averages in the 20th century.
NASA and NOAA collect data from thermometers and other temperature-measuring instruments from weather stations, ocean ships and buoys all over the world. Both data sets include information since 1880.
2022 had a La Niña weather pattern, which generally has the effect of lowering global temperatures compared to normal years.
El Niño and La Niña refer to opposite weather patterns determined by trade winds that blow in the Pacific Ocean. During El Niño weather events, the trade winds that usually blow west across the Pacific weaken, and warm water is pushed east and temperatures rise. During La Niña weather years, trade winds blow harder than usual and push the warm water west across the Pacific toward Asia which tends to be associated with lower temperatures.
Whether you look at El Niño or La Niña years, it’s clear that global temperatures are rising and “those trends are consistent and coherent over decades now,” Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies told CNBC. “And those trends are due to our activities — predominantly because of the increase in carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.”

Global greenhouse gas emissions fell in 2020 because of reduced economic activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions but have since risen again. Some regions of the globe have done better than others at reducing their respective greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were up slightly in 2022 over 2021 but have been trending slightly lower since 2000, according to data the Rhodium Group released Tuesday, but across the board, emission reductions need to be accelerated to mitigate warming temperatures.

Arrows pointing outwards

This infographic from NOAA shows significant climate-related events from the year. (Click on the arrow in the top right corner to make the infographic larger.)
Courtesy NOAA

“What we need to do in order to stop global warming is get down to net-zero carbon dioxide,” Schmidt told CNBC.
When it comes to global temperatures, every 10th of a degree makes a big impact.
“Our normal context for temperature is our body’s temperature or the temperature in the room, and, we’re obviously not tracking that to 10ths of a degree,” Schmidt told CNBC. “But the context for the planet is a very different thing.”
For example, the last ice age 20,000 years ago was 5 to 6 degrees Celsius (9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than the pre-industrial age and the world was completely different: There were huge ice sheets on North America and Europe, the sea level was some 400 feet lower than it is now due to the freezing conditions and woolly mammoths walked the tundra landscape. “Totally different planet,” Schmidt said.
“When we say the planet has warmed more than a degree Celsius in the last hundred years, that is one-fifth of the difference between then and the ice age,” he said.
The temperatures measure the global average and people live in areas of the world that are more extreme than the changes to the global mean. And already, with a rise in the global mean temperature of a bit more than a degree Celsius since pre-industrial levels, there are significant changes to the planet including the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, the intensity of rainfall, the loss of Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers, the loss of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and the increase in sea level.
“We’re seeing all of those changes just from a change of a degree,” Schmidt said.
The United States had 18 distinct weather and climate events that cost $1 billion each, according to a separate report out Tuesday from NOAA. Collectively, those billion-dollar disasters cost the country at least $165 billion and caused at least 474 fatalities, either direct or indirect.
“And, you know, if we keep on going, it’s not going to be a change of one degree, it’s going to be a change of two degrees, it’s going to be a change of three degrees. And it doesn’t go linear. It’s not going to be twice as bad — it’s going to be much worse than twice as bad,” Schmidt said.

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The price of streaming service HBO Max’s ad-free tier is increasing to $15.99 from $14.99, the first price hike since it was launched in 2020.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the merged company that now runs HBO Max, plans to merge Warner’s streaming service with Discovery+ this spring.
The company said the increase will allow it to invest in its content and user experience.

‘House of the Dragon’ series logo displayed on a phone screen and HBO Max website are seen in this illustration photo taken on August 16, 2022.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Warner Bros. Discovery is raising the monthly price of HBO Max by $1 as the company looks to further invest in content and the user experience.
The company said Thursday the HBO Max ad-free tier’s price would increase to $15.99 a month from $14.99, the first price increase for HBO Max since it launched in May 2020. The rate hike will be effective for existing subscribers in their next billing cycle, or on Feb. 11.

The price hike comes ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery spring 2023 launch of its combined HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming service. The merged platform is set to be named Max.
Warner Bros. Discovery executives have said there’s room to grow when it comes to the price of streaming services, and the company aims to make its streaming business profitable in the near future.
“There’s no doubt that these products are priced way too low,” said Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels during a conference earlier this month. “And I think this was partly the capital market fueled phase of land grabbing. You couldn’t lose enough money and couldn’t grow subscribers fast enough. I think that’s behind us.”
The company has been cutting back on costs, such as spending on HBO Max’s original series, as it looks to make streaming profitable. It is also tending to a heavy debt load stemming from Discovery’s acquisition of Warner, which closed last year. Warner Bros. Discovery’s goal is to notch $1 billion in earnings in streaming by 2025.
The company has also been working to improve the user experience, while rebuilding the entire app.
“We’re going to come out with a great product from a consumer experience perspective and that’s frankly the biggest holdback for HBO Max right now. The experience is not where it needs to be,” Wiedenfels said at the conference this month.

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An artist’s ilustration of satellite connections in orbit above the Earth.

CNBC’s Investing in Space newsletter offers a view into the business of space exploration and privatization, delivered straight to your inbox. CNBC’s Michael Sheetz reports and curates the latest news, investor updates and exclusive interviews on the most important companies reaching new heights. Sign up to receive future editions.

Overview: Digital orbital danger

Companies and governments are now launching satellites by the thousands each year, and that changing landscape brings with it the evolving challenge of cybersecurity in space. Think, scores of sensitive data, some of national security, flowing between Earth and remote devices constantly moving miles above the surface. 

The concept of space security arguably doesn’t get talked about enough, but a quick search for something like “cyber,” “space,” and “Pentagon” gives you an immediate sense of how U.S. military leaders see the digital threat to satellites.
SpiderOak, which has been in the “terrestrial” cybersecurity game for quite some time, wants to change that. The company just raised $16.4 million in an oversubscribed round, to make a full-tilt push into building its space business. 
The fundraise was led by Empyrean Technology Solutions – which SpiderOak notes is backed by funding via Chicago private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners – and joined by Method Capital and OCA Ventures.
“It’s very difficult to secure networks in space because, as satellites go around, you have periods of time where they’re out of contact with anybody else,” SpiderOak chairman Charles Beames told me.
Through its software, SpiderOak encrypts data so that it can securely flow from one company’s ground station to another’s spacecraft.

“Cybersecurity is a huge problem … the three or four star generals talk about how it’s the soft underbelly – it’s actually the thing that they’re most worried about, the biggest problem the Space Force has, in terms of a vulnerability. It’s not satellites being shot out of the sky,” Beames added.
Beames has been around the money side of this industry as long as anyone. His career has ranged from leading the Pentagon’s space and intelligence acquisitions, to serving as president of the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace and then executive chairman of spacecraft manufacturer York Space.
While SpiderOak was founded in 2006, and boasts about 75,000 individual customer accounts currently, the company has raised minimal outside funding, with just $25 million before this new round. It entered the space market in late 2019, and Beames stepped in as chairman early last year.
SpiderOak has completed demonstrations of its OrbitSecure product in lab-based simulations, and has won small early contracts from the Air Force to prove out the tech. Beames noted that defense giants like Raytheeon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have contracts with SpiderOak and are testing it as well. 
Next up: Demonstrating its technology with a satellite in orbit, on a mission scheduled to launch in the first half of this year – while SpiderOak builds out its Reston, Virginia headquarters and gets OrbitSecure 2.0 out and rolling.
Correction: SpiderOak’s customer base is about 75,000 individual accounts. A version of this newsletter that was sent to inboxes misstated that figure.

What’s up

ABL Space inaugural launch fails: Shortly after liftoff, an anomaly in the RS1 rocket shut down its nine engines, causing the vehicle to return and impact “directly on the launch pad,” resulting in damage. The FAA said in a statement to CNBC on Thursday that there were no reports of injuries and no public property damage, and that “all debris was contained within the designated hazard area.” – CNBC
SpaceX returns 26th ISS cargo mission, with the company’s Dragon capsule splashing down to complete the flight. – SpaceX
Japanese lunar mission completes fifth milestone as flight continues: ispace’s Mission 1 lander is now over 1.3 million kilometers from the Earth as it heads to the moon. – ispace
OneWeb deploys 40 more satellites after second SpaceX launch, bringing the company’s constellation to 542 satellites in orbit. OneWeb has two launches remaining to complete its first generation constellation. – OneWeb

Industry maneuvers

Capella Space raises $60 million from billionaire Thomas Tull’s fund, as the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery company prepares to launch its next-generation Acadia satellites this year. – CNBC
European airline airBaltic signs with SpaceX to equip fleet with Starlink, and plans to begin offering the service, free of charge, inflight. – airBaltic
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems wins contract from Advanced Space to build a deep space detection satellite under $72 million Air Force Research Laboratory contract. – SpaceNews
NASA names A.C. Charania as chief technologist, who joins after previous roles at Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. – NASA
ST Engineering iDirect names Don Claussen as CEO. He comes to the satellite communications company from Intelsat where he was a vice president with a wide variety of roles. – ST Engineering iDirect
Retired Air Force three star general Steven Kwast named CEO of Skycorp, a California-based space logistics company. – SpaceNews
EchoStar fires senior vice president and Chief Accounting Officer Muhammad Ali Butt, with subsidiary Hughes Network’s Jeffrey Boggs taking over as interim principle accounting officer. An EchoStar spokesperson told CNBC that Butt’s termination “was strictly a personnel issue and not the result of any concern over controls, processes, or financial reporting.” – EchoStar
Astranis brings on Doug Abts as Chief Commercial Officer. He joins after more than seven years at Viasat, most recently as SVP of strategy and corporate development. — Astranis CEO John Gedmark
Slingshot Aerospace hires Thomas Arend as Chief Product Officer. He joins after 18 months at Astra, most recently as VP and head of product management. – Slingshot
Habitat startup Vast Space moves headquarters to Long Beach, California, expanding facilities footprint for future growth. – Vast

Market movers

Virgin Orbit is down 20% week to date, after its first launch of the U.K., and sixth to date, failed mid-flight. The company has begun an investigation into the cause, as the anomaly led to the upper stage engine cutting off early. – CNBC / Virgin Orbit

On the horizon

Jan. 14 – SpaceX Falcon Heavy launching Space Force mission from Florida.
Jan. 15 – SpaceX Falcon 9 launching Starlink mission from California.

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Academics do not contend to write the most entertaining research paper of the year. But Yu Tse Heng, now at the University of Virginia, Christopher Barnes of the University of Washington and Kai Chi Yam of the National University of Singapore should take a bow nonetheless. In a study published in 2022, the trio tested the widespread notion that cannabis increases creativity.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Pricey automobiles are impressive on paper and on the road. For their makers, they also often leave a good impression on the income statement. Global car sales in 2022, at around 79m vehicles, are below the level of a decade ago. Yet demand for fancier sets of wheels costing more than €100,000 ($107,000) grew by around 6.5% a year over the same period, according to Bernstein, a broker.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Peter Bokelmann has had a busy few months. The chief counsel at Trumpf, a maker of machine tools, oversees the firm’s efforts to comply with the new law on the due diligence of supply chains that came into force on January 1st. Mr Bokelmann has been at it since the law was passed in mid-2021. “The enormous effort needed is underestimated,” he sighs. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Jan 14th 2023

Singapore

Driverless vehicles whizz across five new berths at Tuas Mega Port, which sits on a swathe of largely reclaimed land at the western tip of Singapore. Unmanned cranes loom overhead, circled by camera-fitted drones. The berths are the first of 21 due by 2027. When it is completed in 2040, the complex will be the largest container port on Earth, boasts PSA International, its Singaporean owner.

The trade winds blow east

Worldwide port container throughput, TEUs*, bn

Latin America

Middle East and Africa

North America

Source: Drewry Maritime Research

Tuas is a vision of the future on two fronts. It illustrates how port operators the world over are deploying clever technologies to meet the demand for their services in the face of obstacles to the development of new facilities, from lack of space to environmental concerns. More fundamentally, the city-state’s investment, with construction costs estimated at $15bn, is part of a wave of huge bets by the broader logistics industry on the rising importance of Asia, and South-East Asia in particular. The IMF expects the region’s five largest economies—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand—to be the fastest-growing bloc in the world by trade volumes between 2022 and 2027. The result is that the map of global commerce and the blueprints for its critical nodes are being simultaneously redrawn.

Across the planet, the expansion of seaports is becoming tougher, notes Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of transport geo­graphy at Hofstra University in Long Island. Space in the right locations is scarce. Critics of development, especially among environmentalists, are not. Last year a big port expansion in Piraeus, Greece, was blocked by courts for failing to provide the right assessment of its environmental impact. One in Veracruz, Mexico, was also stopped on environmental grounds.

One solution is to make existing logistics networks more efficient rather than merely larger. In April PSA finalised its purchase of BDP International, an American freight-forwarder specialising in supply-chain management, for an undisclosed sum (its previous private-equity owner had reportedly been looking for $1.5bn). Over the past two years DP World, an Emirati port operator, has bought two supply-chain specialists: Imperial Logistics, a South African firm, for $890m and Syncreon, an American one, for $1.2bn.

Planned expansion

Container space

Planned expansion

Container space

Maasvlakte port, Rotterdam
Image: Jean-Paul Rodrigue

Streamlining supply chains only gets you so far, however. At some point, new capacity will be needed. One way to achieve it is by reclaiming land from the sea. This requires feats of civil engineering—and is expensive. Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority spent around $1.8bn on filling in the sea with earth for the first stage of the new Tuas facility. The massive Maasvlakte expansion, the second leg of which opened in 2015, has so far cost the Port of Rotterdam, an enterprise jointly owned by the Dutch state and the city government, around €2.9bn ($3.1bn).

Many ports are too deep for land reclamation to be viable. Some are therefore deciding to build upwards. In conventional set-ups, it is impractical to stack more than six containers on top of each other, and even then tall stacks require boxes to be shuffled around constantly to get hold of the right one. The shuffling can take more time than actually moving containers around the port and onto vessels, says Mathias Dobner, chief executive of BoxBay, a joint venture between DP World and SMS Group, an engineering firm. In BoxBay’s “high-bay” storage system each container sits in an individual rack, where automated cranes can pluck them out individually. In Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port, run by DP World, this allows containers to be stacked 11 high.

An illustration of the “high-bay” container system in operation
Video: BoxBay

If you cannot build out or up, another option is to build elsewhere. That explains the rising popularity of inland “dry ports”, where goods are put in containers ahead of time, ready to be loaded onto ships as they arrive at the pier without needing to be stored for days at the port itself. This also lightens road congestion at the terminals. Around 150km (90 miles) from California’s coast, in the Mojave Desert, Pioneer Partners, an investment firm, has secured land and permits for such a facility, to ease traffic at the hopelessly inefficient ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

In 2016 PSA entered a joint venture with Chinese state-owned rail operators to run a network of dry ports in China. Manufacturers load goods onto trains at one of 13 inland rail terminals for transport to the coast. Some of these terminals are rather a long way from any shoreline. Urumqi in Xinjiang province, home to one of them, is farther from the sea than any other city in the world, around 2,400km from the Bay of Bengal. In 2022 the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank, signed an agreement with another Singaporean logistics firm, YCH Group, and T&T Group, a Vietnamese conglomerate, to develop a $300m inland container depot in Vinh Phuc, in northern Vietnam. The project, known as Vietnam SuperPort, will begin operations in 2024, providing some welcome relief in a country where exports have risen far more rapidly than inland logistical investments.

All the dry-port development in Asia points to the second force reshaping the ports business: the shift of its centre of gravity eastwards. For decades Asian trade has tended to be one-way. Containers loaded with goods manufactured by the continent’s cheap labour sailed to advanced economies and came back largely empty. In the late 1990s more than 70% of Asian exports by value went to other parts of the world. A quarter of a century on, thanks in part to those trade flows and more complex supply chains, Asian economies have become big markets. Today nearly 60% of Asia’s exports flow within the region.

The logistics industry is, like PSA with Tuas, making a long-term wager that this share will grow. Logistics investments grew everywhere amid the pandemic surge in e-commerce. In Asia they ballooned. CBRE, a property consultancy, forecasts that Asia (including China) will account for 90% of the growth in global online shopping between 2021 and 2026. That will require up to 130m square metres of new logistics real estate.

A boom in investment in warehouses for storage and hubs for distribution and fulfilment in the region is already under way. Last year GLP, a Singaporean investment firm specialising in logistics real estate, announced a $1.1bn fund focusing on Vietnam and a $3.7bn one focused on Japan. Its sixth China fund, worth $1bn, closed in early November. India is likely to get a boost as global manufacturers look to diversify their production away from China. The ports business of India’s richest tycoon, Gautam Adani, operates Mundra Port in Gujarat, the country’s largest, and 12 other ports and terminals across seven Indian states. Their combined annual cargo volumes have surged from 200m tonnes three years ago to 300m in 2022. Mr Adani is aiming for 500m tonnes by 2025.

The construction of Mundra Port, Gujarat
Video: NASA Landsat; Google Earth Engine

Investments by shipping giants are pointing in the same eastward direction. In ­October, while global shipping rates were plunging as the effects of pandemic-era bottlenecks eased, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s biggest by total capacity, announced five new ­intra-Asian services. Three months earlier MSC had announced a $6bn joint venture with the government of Ho Chi Minh City to build a port there by 2027. It will be Vietnam’s largest port on completion. In ­August A.P. Moller-Maersk, msc’s biggest rival, completed the $3.6bn purchase of LF Logistics, a Hong Kong-based firm focusing on intra-Asian trade. The deal brought 223 warehouses and 10,000 employees across the continent under the Danish shipping giant’s banner, with an explicit focus on Asian consumers.

When seaborne trade boomed last century, investments in logistics reflected shifts in the global patterns of production and consumption. They are doing so again. And this time the future looks leaner, smarter—and more eastern. ■ More

For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas. He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned it down.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More