One of Europe's leading scientists on Tuesday raised the possibility that the extreme heat wave now settled over at least 30 countries in the northern hemisphere could signal that man-made climate change is accelerating.
"The present heat wave across the northern hemisphere is worrying. There is the small probability that man-made climate change is proceeding much faster and stronger than expected," said Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief scientific adviser to the German government and now head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall center.
Schellnhuber said "the parching heat experienced now" could be consistent "with a worst-case scenario [of global warming] that nobody wants to come true."
PHOTO: REUTERS
He warned that several months' research would be needed to analyze data from around the world before scientists could say why the heat waves are so intense this year.
"What we are seeing is absolutely unusual," Schellnhuber said. "We know that global warming is proceeding apace, but most of us were thinking that in 20 to 30 years time we would be seeing hot spells [like this]. But it's happening now. Clearly extreme weather events will increase."
Other climate scientists across Europe suggested the present heat wave was perhaps the most intense experienced and linked to global warming.
"We've not seen such an extended period of dry weather [in Europe] since records began," said Michael Knobelsdorf, a meteorologist at the German weather service. "What's remarkable is that these extremes of weather are happening at such short intervals, which suggests the climate is unbalanced. Last year in Germany, we were under water. Now we have one of the worst droughts in human memory."
Antonio Navarra, chief climatologist at Italy's National Geophysics Institute, said the Mediterranean region was 2?C to 3?C warmer than usual this summer.
Temperatures across parts of Europe have been a consistent 5?C warmer than average for several months, but the heat waves have extended across the northern hemisphere. Temperatures in some Indian states reached 45?C to 49?C, with more than 1,500 people dying as a direct result. There have been near-record temperatures in Canada and the US, Hawaii, China, parts of Russia and Alaska.
The intense heat in some places has given way to some of the most severe monsoon rains on record, a phenomenon also consistent with climate change models which predict extremes of weather. The heat waves are fuelling concern that climatologists may have underestimated the temperature changes expected with global warming.
According to the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) -- the consensus of the world's leading 2,000 climatologists -- the expected increase is up to 5?C over the next century.
But a recent conference of leading atmospheric scientists in Berlin concluded that the IPCC's models may have underestimated the cooling effect of atmospheric soot, the airborne industrial waste of the past. The upper limit of global warming, they suggested, should range between 7?C and 10?C, which would severely affect food and water supplies, traumatize most economies and fundamentally change everyday life.
The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned last month that extreme weather events would become more frequent. On Tuesday Ken Davidson, director of the WMO's climate program, said: "The world is seeing a change in general conditions and in extremes. We are trying to understand if it's getting more frequent."
Climate scientists at the British government's Hadley center last week said they had new evidence that the heat wave affecting Europe and North America could not be explained by natural causes, but must be partly due to pollution.
On Tuesday, Peter Stott, who led the research team, said: "Once we factor in the effects of human activity, we find we can explain the warming that is observed. Now we have gone a step further and shown that the same thing is happening on the scale of continents."
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number