A flooded area following heavy rain that caused many deaths in Aboud district of Al Jazirah, Sudan, on Saturday. ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
The results of failing to keep the world's temperature down are beginning to show
Extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent, and the world's peoples and their governments are being urged to do more to tackle climate change.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, an environmental group in Beijing, said the consensus among scientists now is that "climate change has resulted in an increase in extreme weather events across the globe, including temperature extremes, heavy precipitation and pluvial floods, river floods, droughts, storms, as well as compound events".
Over the past few years heat waves have occurred in places that had previously enjoyed mild weather, higher temperatures have occurred in normally colder regions, and places that are hot are now frequently enduring wildfires, he said, citing a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that includes a chapter on weather extremes.
The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report said it is an "established fact" that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have "led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since preindustrial times".
The global surface temperature is now about 1.09 C higher than in the preindustrial period (1850-1900), with stronger warming over land (1.59 C) than over oceans.
Extreme weather events have continued to hit the globe this year and have killed many people, disrupted the lives of millions and disrupted production.
In Europe, after a summer of extremely high temperatures, violent thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds have hit the continent, leaving at least 13 people dead in Austria, France and Italy by Friday, authorities said.
The Netherlands is one of many European countries that have suffered drought this summer, bringing water shortages in the low-lying country as inland rivers and lakes have fallen to historically low levels.
The Dutch government has imposed restrictions on farmland irrigation in some areas and called on the public to save water through measures such as reducing car washing and flower watering.
A report titled Drought in Europe that the European Commission published last month said that it is critical that the root cause of the problem be tackled: climate change and its disruption of the planet's water cycle.
"Further efforts are needed also for preventively adapting to the changing weather patterns by climate-proofing energy supply and applying sustainable solutions in agriculture," the report said.
A man stands on cracked soil of Lake Akgol, dried out due to heat wave and vaporization, in Van, Turkiye, on Aug 10. ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
In Portugal and Spain huge wildfires in recent weeks have forced thousands from their homes and reduced large swathes of land to ashes. Though the fires are now under control, there are fears they could flare again, with more hot weather forecast.
The European Forest Fire Information System said there have been 391 wildfires in Spain this year, laying waste to a total of more than 283,000 hectares of land, more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in the whole of last year.
Record high temperatures have also hit many parts of the United States this summer, much of the western US enduring an unrelenting drought.
A recent study by the climate research group First Street Foundation said that more than 100 million US people are expected to experience extremely dangerous heat exceeding 52 C in just 30 years, with both the intensity and frequency of the hottest days of the year rising.
On Wednesday the city of Yangon in Myanmar encountered the heaviest single-day rainfalls in more than 50 years, the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology said. Yangon recorded 170 mm of rain in one day.
In Pakistan more than 580 people have died and thousands have lost their homes due to torrential rains recently. Since last month it is estimated that about 1 million people have been affected by heavy rain, flash floods and landslides as the country had had more than 60 percent of its normal total monsoon rainfall in just three weeks.
In New Zealand, torrential rain hit parts of the country for a fourth day on Friday, forcing hundreds of people from their homes as rivers overflowed their banks and waterlogged ground became unstable.
In Algeria a string of forest blazes killed at least 38 people last week. Deadly fires have become prevalent in the country as climate change has turned large areas of forest into a tinderbox in the hot summer months.
In China the heat has affected southern parts of the country since June. The National Meteorological Center forecast that the duration of this year's regional high temperatures, which have yet to end, will break the 62-day record set in 2013, becoming the longest heat wave in 61 years.
Hu Bin, an associate researcher in the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development of Tsinghua University, said extreme weather will be harmful economically, seriously curbing long-term economic growth of the countries affected. This may exacerbate inequality, Hu said.
In the US a White House document said that this year alone extreme weather has upended the US economy and affected 1 in 3 Americans.
"Both international and domestic supply chains have been disrupted by climate change … supply chains across critical industries including housing, construction, semiconductors, and agriculture have been affected, causing delays and shortages for both consumers and businesses."
Extreme weather has caused Americans $600 billion in damage over the past five years alone, it said, and climate-related risks hidden in workers' retirement plans have already cost US retirees billions in lost pension dollars.
"Climate change poses a systemic risk to our economy and our financial system, and we must take decisive action to mitigate its impacts," the report said.
Extreme weather events in Europe over the 40 years to 2020 such as heat waves and floods killed about 142,000 people and cost the continent almost 510 billion euros ($575.2 billion), a report by the European Environment Agency earlier this year said. The agency called for continued adaptation measures at both individual and state levels.
Pfalzgrafenstein Castle is pictured in the middle of the River Rhine in Kaub, Germany, in August. The water level of the Rhine is low after a long period of drought. MICHAEL PROBST/AP
Just a few extreme events, about 3 percent of the total, were alone responsible for about 60 percent of the financial damage incurred, the report said.
Extreme weather events are driving more people into hunger, especially in countries and regions that already face food shortages. A recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that current food security in the Horn of Africa is dire after "four consecutive rainy seasons have failed, a climatic event not seen in at least 40 years, or since the beginning of the satellite era".
The World Health Organization warned last week that millions of people in East Africa face starvation.
Moreover, according to the UN, 30 million people already live with average annual temperatures of 29 C in the Sahara and the Gulf coast, and 20 million people are forced to leave their homes and move to other areas in their countries each year because of a scarcity of resources and because of extreme weather.
A study in the journal Nature Climate Change said recently that extreme weather events have exacerbated 218 of the known 375 infectious diseases in people, including malaria, hantavirus, cholera and anthrax.
"If the climate is changing, the risk of these diseases is changing," said Jonathan Patz, a co-author of the study and director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ronnie Lins, director of the China-Brazil Center for Research and Business, said climate change will affect economies in various ways. For example, sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fishing, outdoor entertainment and tourism, among others, will suffer.
However, industries related to renewable energy, environmentally resilient buildings, smart clothes, air conditioning equipment and climate monitoring systems, among others, will do well.
Ma said that the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in Paris in 2015, set the goal to limit global warming to well below 2 C, preferably to 1.5 C, compared with preindustrial levels.
However, realizing this goal is difficult, partly because global carbon emissions rebounded sharply last year because of the impact of COVID-19 and energy shortages. The trend has continued this year as the Russia-Ukraine conflict has made major economies focus more on energy security, and some countries have resumed using fossil fuels.
If gas emissions cannot effectively be controlled, the global temperature is likely to rise more than 3 C by the end of this century, Ma said.
"Geopolitical tension is making it more difficult for countries to work together to deal with climate change, and how to push forward global collaboration is difficult."
The slow transition to renewable energy also makes it difficult for countries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, he said.
"China aims for its carbon dioxide emissions to reach their peak by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, major goals in a national green transition drive, which will be important in tackling climate change."
