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CLIMATE CRISIS

EXPLAINED: How the climate crisis is hitting Europe hard

From deadly wildfires to catastrophic floods, Europe is seeing the impact of the climate crisis with episodes of extreme weather only likely to increase in the coming years as average temperatures rise.

EXPLAINED: How the climate crisis is hitting Europe hard
Tourists watch from the roadside as dense smoke darkens the sky from reignited forest fires north of Grimaud, in the department of Var, southern France on August 18, 2021. - (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP)

Europe endured record extreme weather in 2021, from the hottest day and the warmest summer to deadly wildfires and
flooding, the European Union’s climate monitoring service reported Friday.

While Earth’s surface was nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels last year, Europe saw an average increase of more than two degrees, a threshold beyond which dangerous extreme weather events become
more likely and intense, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

The warmest summer on record featured a heatwave along the Mediterranean rim lasting weeks and the hottest day ever registered in Europe, a blistering 48.8C (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in Italy’s Sicily.

In Greece, high temperatures fuelled deadly wildfires described by the prime minister as the country’s “greatest ecological disaster in decades”.

Forests and homes across more than 8,000 square kilometres (3,000 square miles) were burned to the ground.

Front loaders work to move branches and uprooted trees near a bridge over the Ahr river in Insul, Ahrweiler district, western Germany, on July 28, 2021, weeks after heavy rain and floods caused major damage in the Ahr region. – At least 180 people died when severe floods pummelled western Germany over two days in mid-July, raising questions about whether enough was done to warn residents ahead of time. (Photo by Sascha Schuermann / AFP)

A slow-moving, low-pressure system over Germany, meanwhile, broke the record in mid-July for the most rain dumped in a single day.

The downpour was nourished by another unprecedented weather extreme, surface water temperatures over part of the Baltic Sea more than 5C above average.

Flooding in Germany and Belgium caused by the heavy rain — made far more likely by climate change, according to peer-reviewed studies — killed scores and caused billions of euros in damage.

As the climate continues to warm, flooding on this scale will become more frequent, the EU climate monitor has warned.

“2021 was a year of extremes including the hottest summer in Europe, heatwaves in the Mediterranean, flooding and wind droughts in western Europe,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.

“This shows that the understanding of weather and climate extremes is becoming increasingly relevant for key sectors of society.”     

A picture taken on July 15, 2021 shows damaged cars on a flooded street in the Belgian city of Verviers, after heavy rains and floods lashed western Europe, killing at least two people in Belgium. (Photo by François WALSCHAERTS / AFP)

‘Running out of time’

The annual report, in its fifth edition, also detailed weather extremes in the Arctic, which has warmed 3C above the 19th-century benchmark — nearly three times the global average.

Carbon emissions from Arctic wildfires, mostly in eastern Siberia, topped 16 million tonnes of CO2, roughly equivalent to the total annual carbon pollution of Bolivia.

Greenland’s ice sheet — which along with the West Antarctic ice sheet has become the main driver of sea level rise — shed some 400 billion tonnes in mass in 2021.

The pace at which the world’s ice sheets are disintegrating has accelerated more than three-fold in the last 30 years.

“Scientific experts like the IPCC have warned us we are running out of time to limit global warming to 1.5C,” said Mauro Facchini, head of Earth observation at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space, referring to the UN’s science advisory panel.

“This report stresses the urgent necessity to act as climate-related extreme events are already occurring.”

Member comments

  1. The global run-up in temperature prior to the Maunder Minimum before the industrial revolution, during the middle ages was greater than the current run-up. Look to sunspots, not CO2.

  2. The IPCC issues analyses and interpretations. They generally differ, with the analyses noting that there aren’t more extreme events, and those that happen aren’t more severe, and the likely increase in temp is below 2C.

    The interpretations generally seek to find something the analyses which speak of RCP 8.5, rather than the path we’re likely on, which is RCP 4.5. Then presenting the extremely unlikely RCP 8.5 projections as if they were the considered result of the analysis.

    That is, they’re lying again.

  3. Climate change is impacting us all now in Europe but both Africa and Asia experience worse conditions.

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ENVIRONMENT

France and Brazil unveil €1billion green Amazon investment plan

French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off a visit to Brazil on Tuesday with the launch of a billion-euro Amazonian green investment plan alongside his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

France and Brazil unveil €1billion green Amazon investment plan

The pair’s trip to Belem, the northern host city of a major UN climate summit next year, makes Macron the first president of France to visit Brazil in over a decade and comes after a stop in nearby French Guiana.

His public event with Lula on the jungle island of Combu, full of smiles and affectionate gestures, highlighted the stark reversal of relations since the term of Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s far-right predecessor.

The former president had clashed with Macron’s government over environmental destruction – and even lobbed insults directed at French first lady Brigitte Macron.

The investment plan aims to raise “€1billion of public and private investment over the next four years,” according to a roadmap published by the French presidency ahead of next year’s COP30 summit.

The leaders are seeking to promote “a great public and private global investment plan into the bioeconomy” in the Brazilian and Guyanese Amazon, the
announcement said, especially as Brazil presides over the G20 for 2024.

France, the seventh largest economy in the world, and Brazil, the ninth largest, are considered key players in a geopolitical scene marked by rivalry between China and the United States.

Paris sees Brasilia as a bridge to large emerging economies whose voices Brazil is trying to amplify through its presidency of the G20, and membership
of the BRICS+ group.

“We are living in a Franco-Brazilian moment,” the Elysee presidential palace said earlier, highlighting “many points of convergence” with Lula, particularly on “major global issues.”

“France is an essential, unavoidable actor for Brazilian foreign policy,” said the head of Brazilian diplomacy for Europe, Maria Luisa Escorel de Moraes.

Tuesday’s announcement proposes the creation of a “carbon market,” intended to reward countries which invest in natural carbon sinks, such as the Amazon rainforest.

The world’s largest tropical forest plays a key role in the fight against climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon halved in 2023 after soaring under Bolsonaro, as Lula’s government stepped up environmental policing.

The agreement also includes support for “indigenous people and local Amazon communities, which have an essential role in protecting biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and forest management practices,” according to the announcement.

In Belem, Macron awarded tribal chief Raoni Metuktire with the Legion of Honor, the highest French distinction.

“The fight” for the forest and its peoples, “I wanted to say that we will continue to wage it alongside you,” Macron told the chief.

Metuktire left his home in the Amazon more than 30 years ago to travel the world with his warning of the threats posed by the destruction of the rainforest.

A striking figure with his large wooden lip plate and yellow feather headdress, he has taken his message to popes, royals and presidents, with his stature as an environmental campaigner rising with growing awareness of the climate emergency.

France and Brazil are working together to manufacture four conventionally powered submarines, the third of which will be launched on Wednesday by both leaders at the Itaguai naval base, near Rio de Janeiro.

Brasilia could also call on Paris to help it develop nuclear propulsion on a fifth submarine.

Then there are the more sticky topics, such as the long-stalled free trade agreement between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc, which has recently run into fierce resistance from European farmers.

Macron said in January that France opposes the deal because it “doesn’t make Mercosur farmers and companies abide by the same rules as ours.”

While Lula is expected to reiterate his call for the rapid signing of the deal, both Paris and Brasilia have indicated the two-decade old negotiations would not be a major focus of Macron’s trip, which includes meetings on Thursday in the Brazilian capital.

The war in Ukraine, which Macron wants to be a key focus of the G20, is another point of contention. Lula, who has positioned himself as a champion of the “global South”, has insisted that Kyiv and Moscow share responsibility over the conflict and has refused to take a stand against Russia.

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