Climate change causes heatwaves and wildfires to flare up in Europe

Heat waves with higher temperatures

Climate change is causing temperatures to rise and heat waves to become more frequent. The United Nations (UN) Global Climate Scientists Panel and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirm that most land areas are experiencing this.

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have already caused the Earth’s temperature to rise by 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. And warmer temperatures will lead to higher peak temperatures during extreme heat events.

Responding to Reuters news agency, Ms. Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London (UK), co-leader of the World Climate Frontiers Research Organization (WWA) said that current heat waves have increased temperatures with greater frequency due to climate change.

However, there are also many other factors that influence heat waves. As in Europe, atmospheric circulation is also an important factor.

Traces of climate change

To study exactly how climate change affects a given heat wave, scientists conduct temperature-limiting surveys. Since 2004, more than 400 surveys have been conducted on extreme weather events, including heat waves, floods, and droughts, to calculate the role of climate change in each event.

The study also included hundreds of comparisons between current climate simulations and climate simulations without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Based on this, WWA scientists concluded that without human influence on the climate, the probability of a record heatwave in Western Europe in June 2019 would be just 1%.

Heat waves will get worse

The increase in average global temperature of 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times has created many extreme weather phenomena.

Record-breaking heat waves on land would only occur once every 10 years on average if humans had not made significant changes to the climate, but they are now occurring three times more frequently, according to Sonia Seneviratne, a scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Temperatures will only stop rising when humans stop emitting greenhouse gases. Until then, heat waves are sure to get worse. Failure to address climate change will only exacerbate extreme heat waves, which pose even greater dangers.

Countries signed the 2015 Paris Agreement with the goal of cutting emissions to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and aim for 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, current policies are not helping countries achieve that goal.

The IPCC says that in pre-industrial times, there would be one heat wave per decade, but with a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in temperature, there would be 4.1 heat waves per decade and 5.6 with a 2 degree Celsius increase.

Letting temperatures rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius would mean that most years the world would be affected by extreme heat waves.

Climate change causes forest fires

Climate change increases hot and dry conditions, causing fires to spread faster, burn longer and burn more intensely.

In the Mediterranean, the change has brought an earlier start to the fire season and more land to burn. Fires that broke out on the Greek island of Rhodes in mid-July forced the evacuation of 20,000 people as they spread to resorts and coastal villages in the southeast of the island. The hot weather also drained moisture from vegetation, turning it into dry fuel for the fires to spread.

Hotter and drier conditions will make fires more dangerous than ever, says Copernicus scientist Mark Parrington.

A WWA study also found that without human-caused climate change, the likelihood of extreme weather this summer would have been very low. The study also found that humans played an overwhelming role in causing the severe heat waves that swept across North America, Europe and China in July.

Climate change is not the only cause of fires

Forest management and fire sources are also crucial. Data compiled by the European Union (EU) shows that more than nine out of 10 fires on the continent are caused by arson, discarded baking trays, electrical wires or glass.

Spain and other countries are facing severe depopulation in rural areas as people move to cities, leaving behind a tiny workforce to clear away vegetation and fuel that could fuel wildfires.

Several solutions have been proposed to reduce fires, such as artificial, controlled fires that mimic low-intensity fires in the ecosystem cycle, or creating gaps in forests to prevent fires from spreading quickly. But scientists agree that without cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the problems of climate change, wildfires, floods and droughts will only get worse.

A decade or two from now, when people look back, they will see that the wildfire seasons during this time were still quite “mild,” said Victor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering at the University of Lleida in Spain.

According to News