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."
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS