Record temperatures, storms, floods:Global warming is pushing the planet further into uncharted territory

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The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

According to preliminary data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the first week of July was the world's hottest ever recorded since global temperatures have been recorded with "potentially devastating impacts on ecosystems and the environment".At least three series of data indicate this, explains the WMO:those managed by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), those collected by the University of Maine and those by the European Union climate monitoring service, Copernicus.With a global average temperature of 17.24°C on July 7th has been overcome the previous record, reached on 16 August 2016, was 0.3°C.Then, as today, the El Niño climate phenomenon influenced global temperatures.

The month of June had already been the hottest month on record and this week Italy could touch levels never reached in Europe, writes the Guardian.

“We are in uncharted territory and can expect more records to fall as El Niño further develops and for these impacts to extend into 2024,” he declared Christopher Hewitt, Director of Climate Services at WMO.Meanwhile, 2023 is a candidate to be the hottest year ever.

The impacts of record heat they were warned all over the world.After heat waves in China and the United States and drought in Spain, above-average temperatures were recorded in India, Iran and Canada, while extreme heat in Mexico caused more than 100 deaths.Last week in Adrar, Algeria, there was the hottest night ever in Africa, with temperatures not dropping below 39.6°C.Meanwhile, Nigeria is preparing to face another series of dangerous floods, as reports Vanguard.

The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, declared that “the situation we are seeing now is proof that climate change is out of control”.Both May and June saw record sea surface temperatures for the time of year, Hewitt explains.The problem is that “the entire ocean is getting warmer and absorbing energy that will stay there for hundreds of years.”“If the oceans warm significantly, as is happening, there are knock-on effects on the atmosphere, on sea ice and around the world,” added Michael Sparrow, head of the global climate research program at the OMM, who specified:“El Niño hasn't kicked in yet.”

Most scientists have underlined, in fact, that behind these record temperatures, in addition to climate change, there may be the influence of El Niño.El Niño is the warm phase of a natural fluctuation in the Earth's climate system (full name El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO) that normally lasts a couple of years and adds to the long-term trend of global warming caused by man.El Niño causes year-to-year fluctuations by moving heat in and out of deeper ocean layers.Global surface temperatures tend to be colder during La Niña years and warmer during El Niño years.

Last May, a study by the WMO he concluded that in the next five years the Earth would experience new temperature records and global warming would likely exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a threshold beyond which there could be potentially irreversible disastrous knock-on consequences for the planet.Such as, for example, the irreversible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet which could be triggered once warming sea waters cause it to retreat into the deep underwater basin in which it is located, in turn leading to a rise of up to 3 meters of sea level.Which could trigger other knock-on effects, further global warming by amplifying greenhouse gas emissions from natural sources, explains in an article about The Conversation David Armstrong McKay, researcher in Earth Resilience Systems at Stockholm University.However, McKay adds, most scientists do not expect the world to reach a series of climate turning points if El Niño were to briefly push above 1.5°C.

There will be stronger effects when El Niño already impacts average global temperatures 1.5°C higher than the pre-industrial era.In that case, “a future strong El Niño that temporarily pushes global average temperatures to 1.7°C could cause some coral reefs to begin dying before a cooling La Niña arrives,” McKay further explains.“For other systems that respond more slowly to warming, such as ice sheets, the next La Niña should (temporarily) balance things out.”

Increased global warming due to the continued burning of fossil fuels will also make future El Niño events more intense.Models suggest this may already be happening.An additional motivation, if any were needed, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to limit the damage, concludes McKay.

What is happening was already widely predicted by climate models.The problem is that climate models now tell us that warming is accelerating too much without a reduction in emissions, explains al New York Times Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist at Berkeley Earth.

In addition to climate change and the incipient action of El Niño, there may be a convergence of other factors behind the record global temperatures, they write Brad Plumer and Elena Shao on New York Times.The North Atlantic has been record warm since early March, before El Niño began.One factor may be a subtropical high pressure system, known as the Azores High, that has weakened winds blowing over the ocean and limited the amount of dust coming from the Sahara that normally helps cool the ocean.These weather patterns could change in the coming weeks, said Dr. McNoldy of the University of Miami:“But even then we would probably go through temperatures madly record breaking temperatures extremely record-breaking."

The surge in heat has led some meteorologists to expect an above-average Atlantic hurricane season, with around 18 tropical cyclones, a reversal from previous forecasts that predicted a quieter year than usual, precisely because during the years of El Niño there are fewer hurricanes.But that may not happen this year because of unusually warm ocean waters, which can fuel storms.

Other researchers have suggested that recent efforts to clean up sulfur pollution from ships around the world may have pushed temperatures slightly higher, since sulfur dioxide tends to reflect sunlight and cool somewhat. the planet.However, the precise impact is still a matter of debate.

"There appears to be an unusual convergence of warming factors right now.And all of this is happening in a world where we have increased greenhouse gases for the last 150 years,” said Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist at Princeton.

The effects of heat waves

Higher-than-normal temperatures also cause health problems ranging from heat stroke to dehydration and cardiovascular stress, conditions that experts say will become increasingly common with the greater impact of climate change.A research, published on 10 July on Nature Medicine, he noted that during therecord summer of 2022 in Europe more than 61,000 people have died due to the heat:18 thousand in Italy, with an average of 295 deaths per million inhabitants (114 deaths/million inhabitants in Europe).Most of the deaths involved people over the age of 80, and about 63 percent of those who died from the heat were women.

Europe in the grip of a heat wave.Guterres (UN):“We have a choice.Collective action or collective suicide.It's all in our hands."

Heatstroke is the most serious heat-related illness and occurs when the body loses the ability to sweat.Jon Femling, an emergency medicine physician and scientist at the University of New Mexico, explained that the body tries to compensate by pumping blood to the skin to cool down.The more a person breathes, the more fluids they lose, becoming more and more dehydrated.“One of the first things that happens is the muscles start to feel tired because the body starts to lose fluid,” he said.“And then organ damage can occur, such as failure of the kidneys, spleen and liver to function.”

Stress on the body can lead to the brain not getting enough blood.With heat exhaustion, the body may also become cold and clammy.Elderly people, children and people with health problems may be at greater risk when temperatures are high.

The importance of the European Parliament vote on restoring biodiversity

The law for the restoration of biodiversity she survived to the attempt by conservative parties to undermine it.The European Parliament in plenary session was called to vote on one of the most important issues with respect to the net zero emissions objectives:the so-called Nature Restoration Law, the proposed law on the restoration of nature which commits European governments to recovering and restoring areas of territory suffering from desertification, deforestation and the drying out of peat bogs.Together with action on pesticides, nature restoration forms the biodiversity strand of the European Union's Green Deal.The creation of healthy ecosystems is considered essential by scientists if we really want to reduce emissions.

The objective, which we want to make legally binding, is to restore at least 20% of the Union's land and sea surfaces and 15% of the length of rivers by 2030, and create high biodiversity landscape elements on at least 10% of the used agricultural area.“Adopting measures to improve biodiversity on agricultural land has direct positive impacts on agricultural production:among these the improvement of the quality of the soil, which guarantees the retention of water which is then made available to crops;or the restoration of natural areas, which is fundamental for the health of pollinator populations", observe Rudi Bressa on Tomorrow.

The law it passed with 336 votes in favour, 300 against and 13 abstentions.Shortly before, the European People's Party (EPP) had tried to reject the entire bill but the motion was rejected with a margin of just 12 votes (and with 12 abstentions).Now the law will be discussed in the Environment Committee of the European Parliament and then there will be negotiations - also difficult - with the member states.

This is a downwards text both compared to the initial proposals of the European Union and compared to the agreement reached last December at the COP on biodiversity which has set itself the goal of protecting 30% of the planet and restoring 30% of the planet's degraded terrestrial, inland aquatic, coastal and marine ecosystems by 2030.

COP15, epochal agreement to stop the loss of biodiversity by 2030.African states' calls for a fund for the most vulnerable countries are ignored

But this is still good news because a negative vote would have opened unexpected gaps that could have compromised the European Green Deal.As with other aspects of the ecological transition, right-wing parties, increasingly dominant in Europe, have organized themselves to scupper this bill.Among these, also the Italian government, which last June 20 in the Council of the European Union, made up of the ministers (in this case of the Environment) of the 27 member states, had voted against (together with Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden) the general orientation of the proposed law.

In the increasingly close alliance with far-right parties, bordering on climate denialism, the European People's Party - which brings together centre-right parties - has identified the climate agenda as one of the areas of political convergence with worrying repercussions on the declared green objectives European deal, first of all the binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

The scam of conservative ecology, the green thinking of the right in power

In Germany, the extremist nationalists of Alternative für Deutschland are growing in strength after attacking the government's plans to convert domestic heating systems to renewable energy.And the centre-right Christian Democratic Union is also starting to go in this direction.In Spain - where snap elections this month could see the far right enter government for the first time since the return of democracy - the conservative mayor of the Madrid region has accused the left of overestimating the severity of the climate crisis.In the Netherlands, the farmers' movement is growing, opposing attempts to reduce nitrogen emissions resulting from intensive agriculture.Center-right parties, for which agricultural regions are traditionally strongholds, are rushing to take up the cause.

We need to get out of the grip that pits poverty and energy insecurity against ecological transition and the climate crisis, writes The Guardian in an editorial and make the fight against climate change a common background... to humanity.It is therefore necessary to return to making climate change a shared issue:“Much more needs to be done to convince less affluent and rural communities that they will be cared for in a time of difficult and inevitable change (and upheaval).There needs to be a renewed focus on subsidies – for example, for homeowners switching to renewable forms of energy – and viable future pathways for those working in industries affected by the energy transition.”

But, observe again the Guardian, Brussels' plan for an €87 billion "social climate fund", due to be phased in from 2026, is nowhere near enough, given the scale and urgency of the task.

Furthermore, according to a recent observation by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the European Union risks not being able to reach its climate objectives because the funds invested in the ecological transition could prove insufficient.Although the EU has approved a series of measures to reduce CO2 emissions and allocated 30% of the 2021-2027 budget for climate-related spending - with a return of around 87 billion euros per year - the auditors said that climate spending by governments may have been overestimated.

And it doesn't get any better with emissions cuts. According to the report by the European Climate Neutrality Observatory, entitled “State of EU Progress to Climate Neutrality”, although most industrial sectors are moving in the right direction, the overall pace of the energy transition must accelerate “significantly” if we are to achieve net zero emissions.

The darkest scenarios envisaged after the pandemic and in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are coming to fruition.A new era of economic and international insecurity is making the road to an ecological transition and the fight against climate change more difficult.

A study on Nature observed for the first time how the melting of permafrost causes the release of methane into the atmosphere

A new research, published last week on Nature Geoscience, shows that the melting of glaciers in the Arctic that end up on land, due to global warming, facilitates the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which in turn contributes to a further increase in temperatures, thus generating a vicious in some ways worrying.

Scientists have observed the consequences of melting glaciers on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, Norway, which are warming more than twice as fast as other areas of the Arctic and five to seven times faster than the rest of the planet.Methane escapes from groundwater sources that emerge in areas discovered by the retreat of glaciers.Although these underground springs do not currently emit dangerous amounts of this potent greenhouse gas, researchers fear that a vast reservoir of organic carbon, long trapped under the ice, may soon be released into the atmosphere.

“These groundwater sources are completely unknown or pristine sources of methane, both on Svalbard and most likely throughout the Arctic,” he commented Gabrielle Kleber, of the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study.Researchers have known for years that methane leaks from the ocean floor in areas where glaciers were thousands of years ago.But until now no one had directly studied the infiltration of methane on the land left uncovered by the retreat of the glaciers.

When glaciers began retreating in the last century, a gap formed between the end of the glacier and the beginning of the frozen ground, known as permafrost.Groundwater that was previously trapped under the glacial ice began to flow from these cracks, creating a spring.The researchers were able to identify these underground water sources via satellite in areas recently discovered by Arctic glaciers and, over three winters, sampled 123 sources from 78 glaciers.

After analyzing the samples, the researchers found that the concentration of methane in this water was up to 600,000 times higher than the normal concentration of water.Most of the methane then escapes into the atmosphere, where, over 20 years, it has a warming effect about 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.

Although this study focuses only on Svalbard, it is likely that methane emissions from these types of sources also occur in other areas of the Arctic.And because Svalbard is warming much faster than other places in the Arctic, it's also likely that these types of emissions could become more widespread.

The United Arab Emirates aims to triple renewables by 2030

According to the site Arab News the United Arab Emirates they aim to triple the contribution of renewable energy to the country's energy mix over the next seven years with investments of 200 billion dirhams (54.4 billion dollars).The country's cabinet continues Arab News, approved the new National Energy Strategy 2050 and the National Hydrogen Strategy “which aims to position the United Arab Emirates among the leading producers and exporters of low-emission hydrogen over the next eight years”.The hydrogen strategy includes the development of supply chains, hydrogen areas and research centres.Among the measures adopted, there is also the provision of a network of charging stations for electric vehicles.

The expansion of renewable energy “will meet the growing demand for energy in the country driven by accelerating economic growth,” he commented Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the United Arab Emirates, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai.

Second Recharge News, these decisions – which would bring the country's renewable capacity to 14.2 gigawatts by 2030 – come in view of the next United Nations Climate Conference which will be hosted by Dubai.The United Arab Emirates was the first Middle Eastern country to announce the goal of net zero emissions by 2050 among oil-producing states that are notoriously still pushing for the use of fossil fuels in their energy mixes.The country is already home to the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park which is expected to reach a capacity of 5GW by 2030. Masdar, the Abu Dhabi-based global renewables developer, aims to amass a gross portfolio of 100GW of energy renewables, compared to the current approximately 20GW, and to produce one million tons of green hydrogen by 2030, a total that would place it among the top global clean energy operators.

How Bangladesh's strategies to deal with the water crisis and floods could be lessons for everyone

In recent days we have seen images from northern Spain of people desperately clinging to their cars submerged by flash floods caused by heavy rain.

In Japan, one person died and hundreds of thousands were asked to abandon their homes to save themselves from the torrential rains.At least 91 people they are dead in northern India after heavy rains caused landslides and floods.The Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh has received more than 10 times its average rainfall for this time of year.Last Monday, torrential rain they swept away roads, swept over rivers and caused the death of one person in the northeastern United States.More than 13 million Americans were under alert in Boston and western Maine.The Vermont It's been under water for a day.

Although they may seem disconnected from each other, the extreme weather events that are shaking India, Japan, Spain, the United States and China (struggling with prolonged heat waves) have one element in common:storms are forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme precipitation a reality.“As global temperatures rise, we expect heavy rain events to become more common,” explains al Guardian Brian Soden, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami:“There's little to be surprised about, it's what the models predicted from day one.”

 
 
 
 
 
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While it is true that climate change is not the cause of the storms, it is undeniable that these storms are forming in a warmer and more humid atmosphere.Which results in storms dumping more precipitation that can have deadly outcomes.Climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the atmosphere.Instead of allowing heat to radiate from Earth into space, they retain it.

A study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) last May, he explained that by 2027 all inhabitants of the planet should be able to receive timely warnings of impending disasters.Early warning and land management and care systems can save many human lives.In Italy we still have vivid memories of the floods and the floods that they defeated Emilia-Romagna. We talked of lack of interventions to adapt the territory to extreme meteorological events, of insufficient safety measures with respect to hydrogeological instability, of even increased land consumption and, above all, of lack of prevention and poor governance of the territory.

From this point of view, Bangladesh could be a source of inspiration.Water represents at the same time an important resource – Bangladesh is a land of water, its muddy rivers descend from the Himalayas, flowing into a labyrinth of ponds, wetlands and tributaries, before reaching the Bay of Bengal – and a threat in the form of droughts, floods, cyclones, floods and salt water infiltration into aquifers.Threats exacerbated to varying degrees by climate change, and which force 170 million people to work hard to manage these extreme events.A few weeks ago we were talking how heat waves and drought were burning the tea fields and making the working conditions of the pickers extreme.

A warning system has been set up to warn Bangladeshis of possible heavy rains.And so rice farmers can bring forward the harvest before everything is taken away by floods and inundations.There are those who have created floating gardens to grow vegetables, referring to traditional cultivation methods:in this way in the event of flooding the floating bed is not overwhelmed by the water but rises.Finally, where shrimp farms have made the soil too salty for cultivation, there are those who are cultivating okra and tomatoes in the compost, crammed into the plastic crates that once transported the shrimp.

In all these years, Bangladesh has developed adaptation strategies to the consequences of the climate crisis, managing to save human lives during cyclones and floods.But there are many challenges to face, all together, and it is not enough to support adaptation policies:New sources of drinking water must be found for millions of people along the coast, crop insurance must be extended, cities must be prepared for the inevitable influx of migrants from the countryside, and collaboration with neighboring states to share meteorological data.All this – writes Somini Sengupta on New York Times – is done without the help of the richest countries, perhaps still convinced that they can be spared from the climate crisis.But as we are seeing this is not the case.In addition to adaptation, which still receives little funding (29 billion of the 160 billion needed, according to United Nations estimates), work should be done on mitigation, i.e. on cutting emissions.But the interests of the large fossil fuel companies continue to prevail and we are still unable to imagine an alternative to the structure of our energy systems to which we have been accustomed in all these decades.

Unless global emissions are quickly and drastically reduced, Bangladesh will be able to do little on its own to stay afloat, and little it can do to stay above the surface, says Saber Hossain Chowdhury, the Asian country's climate envoy. :“It's like when you have a barrel leaking seven ways and you only have two hands:How do you do it?”.

Data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

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