After the heat record was broken for the tenth time in a row in March, we came uncomfortably close to the one-year streak, but you don’t even need such findings to make people notice that something is wrong, because everyone is faced with increasingly crazy weather every day. Especially in Europe, according to a recent report by Copernicus (C3S), the climate change monitoring service of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Union, it is even rising twice as fast as the global average, reports MTI.
It is enough to go through the most important findings of the report published on Monday to see how big the problem is. As it turned out, 2023 was tied for the first warmest year on record – or second depending on the data set – the surface temperature of Europe’s oceans was higher than at any time before, and unprecedented melting of glaciers could be observed in the Alps. On the positive side, the share of electricity from renewable energy sources was also a record high, 43 percent.
Based on the most recent five-year averages, European temperatures are currently 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while globally this value is 1.3 degrees Celsius higher. The WMO and Copernicus report saw greenhouse gas emissions as the main cause of last year’s extreme heat, but of course they also emphasized that they also noted that the stronger-than-usual El Niño climate phenomenon also played a role.
This year, the report examining the impact of climate change on Europe focused on the impact of heat waves on human health, and found that the number of deaths directly related to extreme weather has increased throughout Europe: last year, there were more than 150 deaths from storms, floods and forest fires. Extreme heat poses a particular health risk to outdoor workers, the elderly, and those with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. According to the report, the number of heat-related deaths has increased by around 30 percent in Europe over the past 20 years.
Extreme weather has brought heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods. In addition, due to warming and unusually little snow, glaciers throughout Europe continued to shrink, and in the last two years, about 10 percent of the remaining glacier ice in the Alps melted. Due to last year’s heat waves, the surface temperature of the European seas also set a record, and in connection with the higher amount of precipitation, a third of the continent’s rivers experienced high flooding, and 16 percent experienced severe flooding. According to the report, however, there were exceptions, for example, temperatures in Scandinavia and Iceland were lower than average.
According to estimates, the economic losses associated with weather and climate change in 2023 exceeded 13.4 billion euros (HUF 5,276 billion). We have already written about the fact that climate change has a price that can be measured in money, and according to a study, it has cost humanity HUF 143 billion per day over the past 20 years. Most of this is due to human deaths, but the destruction of property and other assets also plays a role. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo called the climate crisis “the greatest challenge of our generation”,
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said extreme events are likely to become more frequent and more intense due to climate change.
In the report on the situation of climate change in Europe, the two organizations also pointed out that Europe should develop strategies aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change in order to switch more quickly to renewable resources.
Last year, 43 percent of electricity on the continent came from renewable sources, compared to only 36 percent the year before. This means that more energy was produced in Europe from renewable energy sources than from fossil energy carriers.
