MADRID, Spain (Fulhapress) – A report published on Tuesday (23) by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center indicates that nearly half (47%) of the bloc’s land is on drought alert. European summers are the driest on record, and countries like Italy, France, Germany and Norway are being watched in the face of what researchers refer to as the consequences of climate change.
“Europe has been the region where the temperature increase has been highest and fastest in the past 30 years,” says climate scientist Jose Alvaro Bempao Silva, of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Co-producing the entity’s annual reports on climate and its extremes, Silva warns that the worst may be yet to come: “The probability that one of the years up to 2026 will be the warmest is very high, estimated at 93%.”
Born in Portugal, where he worked for 20 years at Portugal’s Instituto Mar e da Atmosfera, Silva told Folha the good news – deaths were down – and bad news about the climate crisis – the economic toll was mounting.
Question – In 2022 and in recent years European countries have had records of temperatures, droughts and fires. Because?
JOSÉ ÁLVARO PIMPÃO SILVA – Europe has been the region where the temperature increase has been highest and fastest in the past 30 years. The frequency of extreme weather events has increased in the context of climate change, and the human contribution to global warming has increased the likelihood of these phenomena occurring today.
Q: Most likely?
SJ – Yes. For example, they showed that the record-setting extreme heat event in the UK, 40.3°C on July 19, 2022, was at least 10 times more than if we were in a world about 1.2°C cooler.
Q: Will Europe get warmer?
JS – The rate of increase in global temperature is increasing, and each of the past four decades has been warmer than the previous decade. Moreover, the probability that one of the years in 2022-2026 will be the warmest is very high, estimated at 93%.
Q: Has Europe suffered more than the rest of the world?
JS – I wouldn’t say that Europe is suffering more. The climate crisis severely affects the most disadvantaged populations, and the greatest human losses occur in developing countries.
Q: Are deaths increasing?
JS – According to a WMO study that reported for the period 1970-2019, there is a downward trend in the number of deaths globally. In the past decade, it was less than a third of what was reported in the 1970s or 1980s. This decrease is even more significant because of the number of disasters
Climate change has more than tripled, from 711 in 1970-1979 to 3,165 in 2010-2019.
Q: Why?
JS – This decrease is attributed to advances in early warning systems. On the other hand, the economic losses are increasing. Extreme temperatures, from the point of view of the victims, and floods, from the point of view of economic damage, stand out as the most destructive phenomena in Europe.
Q: How do you think Europe should prepare itself?
JS – It is important to understand that there are limits to adaptation. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, is not just a number. While adaptation can play an important role in anticipating and minimizing risks, the main role in reducing future consequences and impacts largely depends on effective mitigation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally.
It is not possible to predict, months in advance, the location, date and severity of a particular extreme phenomenon. However, these possibilities are known to increase in likelihood and intensity in the context of climate change. For example: for every degree of global temperature rise, extreme precipitation events intensify an additional 7%.
Q: What warnings does this crisis send to the southern hemisphere, to Brazil?
JS – The WMO report on the state of the climate in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021 was recently published, highlighting some topics relevant to South America, including droughts in Chile and the Parana Basin, and glacier decline in the Andes , events of heavy rains and floods in parts of Brazil and increased deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which in 2021 reached the highest value since 2009, at about twice the 2009-2018 average.
How do you know this is caused by historical climate change, and not just the result of a few years warmer? We are outside the realm of natural climate variability. The human impact on global warming is immeasurably greater than any natural cause. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is highest in at least 2 million years for carbon dioxide and the last 800,000 years for methane and nitrous oxide.
Q: What about the oceans?
JS – Heat accumulating in the ocean is one of the best indicators of climate change, and until the cessation of greenhouse gas emissions, this change will be irreversible for centuries to millennia. Warmer oceans are expanding, contributing to sea level rise. Arctic ice has its lowest values for at least 1,000 years. In the past 40 years, the decline has been about 40%.
Q: Have you ever tried to convince those who deny that global warming is a reality?
JS – Yes indeed. Sometimes successfully. The best way is with science, revealing all the facts and arguments made by the past decades to understand and explain the impact of human influence on climate warming. Moreover, young people are increasingly aware of the climate crisis that
We pass. They are important educators and communicators, and they help combat misinformation.
Q: What would the planet be like today if human civilization did not exist?
JS – What I can convey is that with human civilization in the post-industrial period, the Earth is not doing well. The global average temperature is about 1.1 °C above pre-industrial values, and the anomaly is increasing on the continents. The past seven years have been the warmest on record, and in 2021, four key indicators of the climate system have reached new record values: the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mean sea level rise, ocean calorific value, and ocean acidification. The climate emergency is caused by man and must be solved by man.
X ray
Jose Alvaro Bempao Silva, 44
With a background in geography and climatology, he worked for 20 years at the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera. Today, he works for the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), where he collaborates in the preparation of annual reports on the climate and its extremes on the planet.
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