A series of detailed maps have laid bare the scale of possible forest fires, floods, droughts and deluges that Europe could face by the end of the century without urgent action to adapt to and confront global warming.
An average 1m rise in sea levels by the end of the century — without any flood prevention action — would mean 90 percent of the surface of the English city of Hull would be under water, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has said.
English cities including Norwich, Margate, Southend-on-Sea, Runcorn and Blackpool could also experience flooding covering more than 40 percent of the urban area.
Photo: AP
Across the North Sea, Dutch cities including the Hague, Rotterdam and Leiden were predicted to face severe floods from an average 1m sea level rise, which is forecast if emissions rise 4°C to 6°C above pre-industrial levels.
The model does not account for the Netherlands’ extensive flood prevention measures, although many other countries have not taken such action.
Meanwhile, large areas of Spain, Portugal and France would be grappling with desertification, with the worst affected zones experiencing a two-and-half-fold increase in droughts under the worst-case scenario.
Hotter summers increase the risk of forest fires, which hit record levels in Sweden in 2018. If emissions exceed 4°C, France, southern Germany, the Balkans and the Arctic Circle could experience a greatly increased fire risk.
However, the absolute fire danger would remain highest in southern European countries, which are already prone to blazes.
Further north, winters are becoming wetter. Failure to limit global warming below 2°C could mean a swath of central and eastern Europe, from Bratislava in the west to Yaroslavl, Russia, in the east, would be in line for sharp increase in “heavy rain events” during autumn and winter by the end of the century.
In some areas of central and eastern Europe there is predicted to be a 35 percent increase in heavy rain events, meaning torrential downpours would be more frequent.
While the climate data have been published before, this is the first time the EU agency has presented it using detailed maps on one site.
Users can zoom in on small areas, for example, to discover that one-third of the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham could be exposed to flooding by 2071.
The agency hopes the maps will reach decisionmakers in governments and EU institutions, who would not usually read a lengthy EEA report on the impact of the climate emergency.
“It’s very urgent and we need to act now,” said Blaz Kurnik, an EEA expert in climate change impacts and adaptation.
Even if countries succeed in restricting global temperature rise, existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would still have an effect, he said.
“The number of extreme events and sea level rise will still continue to increase for the next decades to a century,” Kurnik said.
“Sea level rise, especially, can be problematic, because it is still increasing because of past emissions and the current concentration of greenhouse gases,” he added.
The agency wants governments to focus on adapting to unavoidable global warming.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS