Unless the world acts now by implementing climate pledges, this heat wave that is experienced in the UK and in some parts of European countries is just the beginning. Happening at the same time as a wildfire disaster ravaging Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia and Turkey.
Portuguese authorities say at least 238 people have died from the heat over the past week, Alys Davies and Malu Cursino, reporters revealed on BBC. However, the fire has led thousands in danger zones to leave their homes for the temporary shelter provided. The town of Pinhão in Portugal recorded a temperature of 47 degrees Celsius this week, a record high for the country in July. Thus, the Portuguese weather forecasters say that temperatures will continue hovering above 40 degrees Celsius before dropping next week. On Tuesday, July 19, 2022, Met Office announced that parts of the UK have provisionally reported 40 degrees Celsius for the first time ever, damaging infrastructure and transportation.
The Network Rail, which operates the country’s rail system, issued a “do not travel” warning for trains that run through areas covered by a “red” warning issued by the Met Office because they are not built to cope with extremely hot temperatures, Mark Landler, London bureau chief of The New York Times reported. The temperature on Tuesday in Paris reached 40.5 degrees Celsius, the New York Times revealed. The city had recorded temperatures above 40 only twice before, in 1947 and 2019, according to the national weather forecaster.
In Germany, on Wednesday, warnings of hot weather of up to 39 degrees Celsius are in place, the national weather service, DWD mentioned. Major fires have also affected Italy in the past days, causing the temporary closure of a key rail route between Rome and Florence, Italian media report.
Heatwaves have become more frequent, more intense, and last longer because of human-induced climate change, said Mark McCarthy of the National Climate Information Centre at the UK’s Met Office.
Peter Wise and Leslie Hook, environment and clean energy correspondents at Financial Times reported in an article “Wildfires rage across Portugal as intense heatwave grips Europe” that Ricardo Trigo, a climatology professor at Lisbon University, said even if the world did manage to keep its greenhouse gas emissions stable for the next two decades, which is not feasible, the heatwaves would continue to become more frequent and extreme, climate change models show. The reason is that emissions accumulate in the atmosphere for decades, Trigostressed. According to Christopher Lyon and other researchers at the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada mentioned that their projections show global climate impacts increase significantly after 2100 without rapid mitigation.
The world cannot afford the risk and cost of climate disasters. Africa produced all the food it needed in the past 50 years but climate change made water scarce, and the desert swallowed hundreds of kilometres of fertile land, year after year, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission stated in Davos 2022. Report also reveals that in July 2021, widespread flooding was experienced across Germany, France and other countries in Europe, with damages worth $43 billion.
For the past two decades, annual floods in Nigeria have resulted in damage to properties worth close to $1 billion. Between the years 2011–2020, Nigeria recorded about 1,187 deaths connected to flooding, Nuru Umar and Alison Gray stated in a research article titled “Flooding in Nigeria: a review of its occurrence and impacts and approaches to modelling flood data,” which was published September 2022, in International Journal of Environmental Studies.
On Wednesday, July 20, 2022, US President Joe Biden announced $2.3bn to help build infrastructures such as expanding flood control, shoring up utilities, retrofitting buildings, and helping families pay for heating and cooling costs that can withstand extreme weather and natural disasters. Mr Biden spoke in Massachusetts as tens of millions of people in the US, across more than two dozen states, are living under heat warnings this week, Bernd Debusmann Jr. BBC News reporter in Washington, revealed.
The window to meet the UN climate targets is ending as temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make the unprecedented implementation of climate policy and act together toward a steep cut in carbon emissions.
Ogunnigbo is an environmental consultant at Going Green International Consults Limited, Ibadan and climate action advocate
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