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Extreme weather challenges the world

2021-07-25T04:09:26.748Z


The coincidence of devastating meteorological phenomena in different parts of the planet has placed climate change in the focus of political debate and social concern. EL PAÍS begins a series on the critical points of the climate crisis


The thermometer of a small Canadian town reaches 46.6 degrees on a Sunday in June, the highest temperature of which there are records so far in that North American country. The next day, it goes up to 47.9. On Tuesday, just 24 hours later, it reached 49.6 degrees, a record more typical of Baghdad than of a village in southwestern Canada. A day later, when the heat subsides a bit, the forest fires hit. And the following Sunday there are hardly any houses left without scorching in the town. It is not the plot of a disaster movie or one of the cruel divine punishments of the Old Testament. This is what happened at the end of this June in Lytton,the British Columbia township of 200 that was devastated by fire after becoming the zero point of the tremendous and unusual heat wave that hit the northwestern coast of North America.

It is likely that the images of scorched Lytton or cooling centers, those sports centers and pavilions enabled by the authorities to protect the population from the deadly heat with air conditioners in the United States and Canada, have almost been forgotten. Because this week they are much fresher in the memory of all the photographs and videos of the tremendous floods in Germany and Belgium, or those of the passengers of the Zhengzhou subway, in China, with the water literally around their necks.

They are scenes from the disaster movie in which humanity seems to be trapped. An important part of the script, paradoxically, has been written by humanity itself with its greenhouse gas emissions that overheat the planet and that have not stopped growing since the Industrial Revolution, according to most climate scientists. Patricia Espinosa, the head of the UN climate change area, sums it up like this: “What we are seeing is totally consistent with what science has been telling us for many years, that these extreme phenomena are becoming more frequent. and stronger, destructive and virulent ”.

Espinosa believes that the latest extreme events can serve to "raise the awareness of decision makers, politicians at all levels, about the urgency and seriousness" of the "emergency" situation in which the planet is and, about everything, the human being. "As the effects of climate change become more present, more evident, and affect more and more people, this will influence the decisions that citizens make, especially when they have to vote," warns this UN representative . José Manuel Gutiérrez, deputy director of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria, believes that a “very high level of awareness in society has already been reached”. He considers that the involvement that youth already had, is now joined by the older generations, who have seen "the ears of the wolf.""Society is starting to get scared," sums up this scientist.

Gutiérrez is one of the four Spaniards who have been part of the last great report of the IPCC, the international group of experts linked to the UN that for more than three decades has been radiographing climate change and laying the foundations of knowledge about warming after reviewing all scientific literature.

Part of that status report, the sixth since the IPCC was created, will be released in early August.

On video, an analysis of recent extreme temperatures in different parts of the world.

VIDEO: EPV.

These studies are specially designed so that policy makers have enough information to make the necessary decisions to mitigate and adapt their countries to climate change. And this first block of texts of the sixth situation report will be published just 90 days before the start of the climate summit in Glasgow (Scotland), which had to be postponed last year due to the pandemic. That appointment is supposed to be the defining moment for countries to take a radical turn to disengage from fossil fuels if they want warming to stay within the least catastrophic limits possible. The problem is that there is less and less time to take that turn ... And as the climate crisis progresses, what is expected are more extreme (and more intense) meteorological phenomena such as heat waves,torrential rains, fires, droughts ...

Heat waves and global warming

Sergio Vicente-Serrano is a researcher at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, of the CSIC, and another of the Spanish experts who have participated in the preparation of the IPCC study.

Remember that extreme events have always occurred in nature, as can be deduced when you know how to

read

in sediments, tree rings or documentary sources. But he explains that on this "natural climate variability" another phenomenon is now superimposed: global warming of anthropogenic origin —that is, induced by greenhouse gases that humans emit when burning oil, gas and coal fundamentally— . Climate change makes the atmosphere increasingly "warmer" and contains "more energy", which translates into more frequent and intense extreme phenomena, as science has warned for years and is already being seen.

Sonia Seneviratne, a Swiss climatologist who is a member of the Zurich Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences and also of the IPCC, is also a member of the World Weather Attribution. It is a group of scientists that tries to answer in the most agile way possible to the question that politicians, journalists and citizens in general now often ask themselves in the face of a great heat wave or torrential rains: is climate change behind it? These specialists, basically, what they do is calculate the probability that a specific extreme phenomenon would have occurred if climate change did not exist. In the case of the tremendous heat wave at the end of June in western Canada and the United States, the attribution report for this group left almost no room for doubt:something of that magnitude and in those latitudes of the globe would have been practically impossible without global warming.

PHOTO GALLERY I A summer of extraordinary climatic events

Seneviratne points out that "the effects of climate change are particularly clear for hot extremes, including heat waves."

Remember that those waves have already become "more intense and more frequent around the world."

It can be seen in Canada or Spain, where the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) has also detected that the waves are more common, durable and strong in the country, as pointed out in a report last September.

Extremes of heat are one of the most visible traces of the climate crisis. But also the increase in average temperatures, which are already 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial levels —that is, the average for the period between 1850 and 1900. But, in addition, in the last decade most of the warmest years ever recorded on the planet are concentrated.

Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, a researcher at the Barcelona National Supercomputing Center and also a member of the IPCC, warns of the risks that the 1.2 degrees that are usually used when talking about warming masks the true dimension of the problem. The 1.2 degrees refer to the average temperature of the air throughout the planet, that is, both the continental one and the one referred to the surface of the oceans, which warm at a slower rate. If only continental temperatures are taken as a reference, global warming would already be 1.96 degrees, according to the latest Berkeley Earth annual report. But that average of almost 2 degrees also hides extreme situations: such as the extremely high warming that the Arctic is experiencing.This rise in temperature and the accelerated thaw was "one of the most extreme scenarios that the IPCC had mentioned," recalls Patricia Espinosa. In the same category, Doblas-Reyes includes the Mediterranean region: "it is heating up at a brutal rate and it is something very serious, almost as serious as what is happening in the Arctic."

Extreme floods and rains

Heat and waves are not the only trail that climate change leaves behind. Other phenomena, such as torrential rains, will also increase in intensity and virulence on the planet. After the huge and deadly floods of recent days in Central Europe and China, the same question arises: is global warming behind it? "It is difficult to accurately quantify the contribution of climate change to the floods in Germany and China at this time, but both events were associated with very heavy rainfall," Seneviratne responds. “It is well established that heavy rainfall events are becoming more frequent and intense around the world. Therefore, it is likely that human-induced climate change has contributed to making these events more intense or more likely ”, adds the Swiss climatologist.

His research group is preparing an attribution report on the floods in Central Europe.

The study is led by Frank Kreienkamp of the German meteorological service.

Kreienkamp affirms that they hope to have their conclusions in mid-August and is reluctant to advance any key on the result because “the analysis has just begun”.

However, the German Chancellor,

Angela Merkel, and her Government have directly linked the floods to global warming and have opted to increase the speed of reduction of greenhouse emissions.

The rains have also put the climate crisis back into the focus of the German electoral campaign.

People walking along a flooded highway in Zhengzhou, in central China's Henan province, on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.

The professor of Sociology at the Carlos III University, Mercedes Pardo-Buendía, believes that these types of extreme phenomena are increasing "social awareness in recent years."

He maintains that in "the collective imagination" a maxim has been inserted: "climate change is already here."

"Denialism - increasingly diminished - is not affecting the population in light of the evidence," adds this sociologist specializing in climate change and sustainability.

Global emissions continue to rise

Something similar is the opinion of Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA): “The extreme weather events that we are seeing from Nepal to Brazil, from Germany to Belgium, from the Middle East to Russia, are serious reminders for all of us. that climate change is here and that perhaps it is happening faster than science suggested ". And he adds: "they remind us that measures need to be taken, especially in the energy sector, to reduce emissions." Energy is responsible for around 80% of all greenhouse gases that the global economy expels.

When the Paris Agreement against climate change was signed in 2015, the 200 countries that closed it pledged to try to ensure that the increase in the average temperature of the planet did not exceed 2 degrees by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial levels and, in as far as possible, stay below 1.5 degrees. For that, it would be necessary for global emissions to be practically zero by the middle of this century. A good number of countries - representing around 70% of the world's emissions - have already committed to that. This has been done by Europe or the new US Administration and, with a little less ambition, also China - which has put on the table to reach zero net carbon dioxide emissions by 2060-.

But to achieve these goals, a radical change is already needed with, for example, a massive and rapid implementation of renewables and electric mobility, as indicated in one of the latest IEA reports. The policies that most countries have in place are not heading in that direction. Birol gives as an example the plans to get out of the pandemic crisis: "Governments have put 16 billion dollars on the table so far for the recovery of the covid, but only 2% has been to encourage clean energy." This partly means that global emissions will grow again strongly this year. "And in 2023 they will be the highest in history," predicts Birol, who warns that this will occur in a context of increasingly frequent and virulent extreme events due to climate change.

Despite his general pessimistic tone, Birol, who together with Patricia Espinosa participated on Friday in the G-20 climate and energy ministers summit in Naples, applauds the recent climate plan presented by the European Commission, which is aligned in many sections with the IEA recommendations.

But he warns that during the next year this ambitious program will have to be negotiated with the Twenty-seven in a context of elections, an increase in energy prices and populist movements that may lower the goals set by the Commission.

But also in a context of extreme phenomena that remind society and political leaders what will happen if greenhouse gases are not drastically reduced to tackle global warming.

Climate change radiography

EL PAÍS starts this Sunday a series of reports on the impacts of global warming in different parts of the planet.

The series begins with a report from Siberia, where permafrost, the permanently frozen layer of land, is now melting from warming and releasing more greenhouse gases.

Permafrost: Siberia's frozen soil is melting

In Sakha-Yakutia, a Russian region settled almost entirely on permafrost, the effects of global warming radically change the landscape and daily life.

NORTH AMERICA

Coming soon...

SPAIN

Coming soon...

MIDDLE EAST

Coming soon...

AFRICA

Coming soon...


Source: elparis

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