BBC Weather: Thundery spells to dominate ahead of heatwave
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Over the past few weeks, India and Pakistan have been gripped by a prolonged heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 42C in numerous cities across the subcontinent. This comes just weeks after India recorded its hottest March since the country’s meteorological department began its records over 120 years ago. However, Asia isn’t alone in dealing with extreme weather events, with experts warning that Europe, including the UK, could be next.
Peter D Carter, the Director of the Climate Emergency Insititute shared a recent study, tweeting: “Europe to be hit with droughts of unprecedented intensity and duration.”
The study, published in March, found that between 2018-2020, Europe experienced a historic multi-year drought, which scientists found to be the most intense drought event on the continent in the past 250 years.
The scientists also used climate model simulations to find that Europe will need to prepare itself more such droughts of growing intensity and duration.
The researchers warned of a record-breaking eight-year-long drought under an intermediate emissions scenario and even a harrowing 25 year-long period under the worst-case scenario of a climate breakdown.
The researchers wrote: “This finding provides new evidence that the ongoing global warming exacerbates current drought events.
“The key message of this study is that the projected future events across the European continent will have a comparable intensity as the 2018–2020 drought but exhibit considerably longer durations than any of those observed during the last 250 years.
“Our analysis also shows that these exceptional temperature-enhanced droughts significantly negatively impact commodity crops across Europe.”
According to a recent report from the European Commission, the bloc loses about €9billion (£7.6 billion) every year due to droughts.
According to researchers, “depending on the region, between 39 percent and 60 percent of the losses are related to agriculture, 22 percent–48 percent to the energy sector, while 9 percent–20 percent of the total damages correspond to public water supply systems.”
Aside from direct monetary hits, the report also noted that the natural net ecosystem uptake of carbon can slow down during a drought.
EU Commissioner for the Environment, Fisheries and Oceans Virginijus Sinkevičius warned: “Drought and water stress now cause €9billion of damage every year, not counting damage to ecosystems and the services they provide.
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“Only healthy rivers and lakes can help protect us against the rising challenges of droughts and floods.
The scientists were able to blame climate change as a major driver of the droughts, warning that rising temperatures would only increase the frequency and severity of these events.
They wrote: “The severity of the recent droughts highlights the concern that global warming may be significantly contributing to their evolution and that its effects will continue to exacerbate them in the future.”
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