Europe and northern hemisphere warming fast: Europe faces droughts, floods

Europe faces droughts, floods and storms as climate change accelerates
Europe and northern hemisphere are warming at faster pace than the global average and ‘multiple climatic hazards’ are expected, says study, Guardian, Arthur Neslen, 25 Jan 17. Europe’s Atlantic-facing countries will suffer heavier rainfalls, greater flood risk, more severe storm damage and an increase in “multiple climatic hazards”, according to the most comprehensive study of Europe’s vulnerability to climate change yet.

Temperatures in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are predicted to soar to glacier-melting levels, while the Mediterranean faces a “drastic” increase in heat extremes, droughts, crop failure and forest fires.

Europe and the entire northern hemisphere are warming at a quicker pace than elsewhere, to the extent that tropical diseases such as West Nile fever are expected to spread across northern France by mid-century.

Hans-Martin Füssel, one of the lead authors of the European Environment Agency report, said that scientific evidence was pointing increasingly to a speeding up in the pace of climate change.

We have more data confirming that sea-level rise is accelerating,” he said. “It is not a linear trend, largely due to increased disintegration of ice sheets. There is also new evidence that heavy precipitation has increased in Europe. That is what is causing the floods. The [climate] projections are coming true.”

Earlier this month, Nasa, Noaa and the Met Office confirmed that 2016 had broken the record for the hottest year ever previously held by 2015, which had itself broken the record that had been held by 2014.

The new EEA report finds that land temperatures in Europe in the last decade were 1.5C warmer than the pre-industrial age, although near-surface temperatures – measured at a metre above ground level – were only 0.83C-0.89C warmer……..

In the Arctic, one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, many habitats for flora and fauna such as sea ice, tundra and permafrost peat lands have already been lost.

Oxygen-depleted ocean “dead zones” caused by agricultural fertilisers – particularly in the Baltic Sea – and ocean acidification fed by an influx of freshwater from melting continental ice will pose further threats to marine ecosystems, and the indigenous peoples who depend on them.

While retreating sea ice will open up the potential for greater resource exploitation, the report’s authors warn that “utilising Arctic oil and natural gas resources would challenge the transition to a low-carbon society, as it is recommended that two-thirds of known global fossil resources remain in the ground if the 2C warming limit of the UNFCCC [UN framework convention on climate change] is to be met.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/25/europe-faces-droughts-floods-storms-climate-change-accelerates