Europe lashed by extreme weather as climate crisis grows

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Waves hit the dike in Wimereux on February 17, 2022, after Northern France was hit by winds as much as 115 km/h as Storm Dudley moved over the UK and Eire in direction of the continent. – At the very least three folks have been killed in extreme storms that hit Europe on February 17, 2022, with winds reaching 180 km/h, inflicting visitors disruption and in Britain, Storm Dudley induced transport disruption on February 16, 2022, though the injury was not widespread. (Photograph by Denis Charlet / AFP)

by Marlowe HOOD
Agence France Presse

PARIS, France (AFP) — Europe endured file excessive climate in 2021, from the most well liked day and the warmest summer season to lethal wildfires and flooding, the European Union’s local weather monitoring service reported Friday.

Whereas Earth’s floor was almost 1.2 levels Celsius hotter than pre-industrial ranges final yr, Europe noticed a mean improve of greater than two levels, a threshold past which harmful excessive climate occasions grow to be extra probably and intense, the Copernicus Local weather Change Service (C3S) stated.

The warmest summer season on file featured a heatwave alongside the Mediterranean rim lasting weeks and the most well liked day ever registered in Europe, a blistering 48.8C (120 levels Fahrenheit) in Italy’s Sicily.

In Greece, excessive temperatures fuelled lethal wildfires described by the prime minister because the nation’s “biggest ecological catastrophe in many years”.

A wildfire burns a forest within the village of Villa, Northwestern Athens, on August 18, 2021. – As devastating wildfires ravage Greece, specialists say the blazes forged a harsh gentle on the failure to organize in opposition to and comprise them, threatening irreversible injury to the nation’s wealthy biodiversity. (Photograph by ANGELOS TZORTZINIS / AFP)

Forests and houses throughout greater than 8,000 sq. kilometres (3,000 sq. miles) have been burned to the bottom.

A slow-moving, low-pressure system over Germany, in the meantime, broke the file in mid-July for essentially the most rain dumped in a single day.

The downpour was nourished by one other unprecedented climate excessive, floor water temperatures over a part of the Baltic Sea greater than 5C above common.

Flooding in Germany and Belgium attributable to the heavy rain — made way more probably by local weather change, in line with peer-reviewed research — killed scores and induced billions of euros in injury.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stands on the banks of the small Ahr river in Ahrweiler, in Rhineland Palatinate, southwestern Germany, on October 10, 2021. – Steinmeier pays a go to to the area that was devastated in mid-July by floods inflicting damages and casualties. (Photograph by Michael Probst / POOL / AFP)

This {photograph} taken on August 13, 2021 exhibits mangled vehicles and a broken bridge in Trooz, one month after the river Vesdre burst its banks engulfing the city in floodwaters. – One month after enormous storms battered northwestern Europe and compelled an unprecedented wave of floodwater by means of densely populated valleys, Belgian residents are nonetheless in shock. The federal government of Wallonia has collected 155,000 tonnes of particles however red-brick industrial villages are nonetheless cluttered by smashed vehicles, uprooted timber and furnishings ruined by mud and heating oil. (Photograph by Dave CLARK / AFP)

Because the local weather continues to heat, flooding on this scale will grow to be extra frequent, the EU local weather monitor has warned.

“2021 was a yr of extremes together with the most well liked summer season in Europe, heatwaves within the Mediterranean, flooding and wind droughts in western Europe,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo stated in a press release.

“This exhibits that the understanding of climate and local weather extremes is changing into more and more related for key sectors of society.”

– ‘Working out of time’ –
The annual report, in its fifth version, additionally detailed climate extremes within the Arctic, which has warmed 3C above the Nineteenth-century benchmark — almost 3 times the worldwide common.

Carbon emissions from Arctic wildfires, largely in jap Siberia, topped 16 million tonnes of CO2, roughly equal to the full annual carbon air pollution of Bolivia.

Greenland’s ice sheet — which together with the West Antarctic ice sheet has grow to be the primary driver of sea stage rise — shed some 400 billion tonnes in mass in 2021.

UPERNAVIK, GREENLAND – SEPTEMBER 07: Icebergs are seen from NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) analysis plane on September 7, 2021 close to Upernavik, Greenland. The NASA Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) marketing campaign is wrapping up a six-year mission finding out the ocean and glaciers alongside Greenlands 24,000 mile distant shoreline with airborne and shipborne instruments- information which can’t be captured by satellite tv for pc. Every summer season, OMG releases round 250 ocean probes from a modified DC-3 plane into the ocean to watch the temperature and salinity of Atlantic subsurface waters round Greenland. In keeping with NASA, the objective of the mission is to determine how a lot of Greenlands ice soften is attributable to warming oceans. Greenlands huge ice sheet holds sufficient water to boost sea ranges by round 25 toes worldwide. Mario Tama/Getty Photos/AFP (Photograph by MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Photos through AFP)

The tempo at which the world’s ice sheets are disintegrating has accelerated greater than three-fold within the final 30 years.

“Scientific specialists just like the IPCC have warned us we’re working out of time to restrict world warming to 1.5C,” stated Mauro Facchini, head of Earth remark on the European Fee’s Directorate-Common for Defence Business and House, referring to the UN’s science advisory panel.

“This report stresses the pressing necessity to behave as climate-related excessive occasions are already occurring.”

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