Flooding in Europe and Extreme Temperatures in Canada — Climate Change is Here
And according to the IPCC, it is here to stay to make things worse.
The year 2021 is already a year of extremes. In early June, the region I live in (Alkmaar, 50 km north of Amsterdam) received over 100 mm of rain in a single rain shower, the amount that normally falls in over a month. Two days later, another rain shower added a similar amount.
While my personal concern was limited to the mulch washing away from my garden, farmers in the region were less lucky. Entire crops of potatoes and flower bulbs were lost.
This week, the southeast of the Netherlands and its neighbouring countries, Germany and Belgium, received over 150 mm of rain. The river the Maas (Meuse) has a water level that is 5 meters higher than normal.
With rivers and canals not being able to drain the water to sea quick enough, water is finding its way into the cities with devastating results. The death toll has reached more than 100.
Heat
While parts of Europe are flooding, the Northwest Pacific of the United States and western Canada are struggling with a heat dome. Lytton, a place in Canada nobody had ever heard of before, set the Canadian heat record at 49.5 °C.
The heat dome has caused a significant amount of casualties and damages. Several hundreds of people have succumbed to the heat, up to 80% of certain crops have been lost and forest fires are raging everywhere.
But nature is also suffering. A billion marine animals may have been killed, literally cooking shellfish on the Canadian shores, and glaciers in the Alberta and British Colombia mountains are melting at an alarming rate.
More extremes
On the other side of the world, the Southern island of New Zealand was experiencing severe rainfall causing flooding in the Canterbury region last month. And the bad weather remains with risks of more flooding.
Earlier this year, on the 6th of February, a sky-breaking temperature record was measured on Antarctica at a whopping plus 18.6 °C. Yes, that’s right, 18 degrees Celsius above zero.
A week later, Texas was struck by an unusual winter storm killing dozens and leaving others with a $17,000 energy bill as power plants literally froze.
A month later, the Midwest of the United States was struck by 49 tornados in a three-day period during a severe outbreak of thunderstorms.
Climate Change
This is not just a bad year. Extreme weather is becoming more violent and more frequent.
The Dutch Weather Institute KNMI has concluded that showers with more than 20 mm of rain occur 25% more often these days in The Netherlands. As the temperature of the air is, on average, about 1.2 °C warmer due to climate change, the air can contain 9% more moisture. And while a warmer climate is on average drier, if it rains, it pours.
Scientists have also concluded that the heat dome Canada is experiencing would never have been able to exist in the past. More concerning is the expectation that such a heat dome could exist every five to 10 years.
Climate Alarm
And while the world is suffering from extreme weather, a draft of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, due summer 2022, was recently leaked to the French press Association AFP.
The draft warns of a series of tipping points beyond which recovery is no longer possible. Tipping points are like dominoes, once the first one falls, they all fall, each domino causing havoc around the world.
A tipping point is the Arctic permafrost. Once the ground defrosts, large amounts of methane, a strong greenhouse gas, will be released. Another tipping point is the melting of large sheets of land ice of Greenland and the Antarctic, which would raise sea levels and change ocean currents.
In the draft report, the IPCC concludes that global warming is accelerating significantly faster than scientists have expected so far.
The clock is ticking
The IPCC is still of the opinion that if we stay below global warming of 1.5 °C, the effects are manageable. However, if we continue with the carbon emissions as we are doing today, we will reach this threshold by 2028. That is a mere six and half years left.
We can delay reaching this threshold by cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030. Not compared to 1990, not compared to a “business as usual” scenario, but actually cutting our current emissions in half.
With coal consumption increasing, we are running out of time to take serious action.
