{"id":303516,"date":"2021-07-19T22:22:34","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T19:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/europe-floods-show-need-to-curb-emissions-adapt\/"},"modified":"2021-07-19T22:22:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T19:22:34","slug":"europe-floods-show-need-to-curb-emissions-adapt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/europe-floods-show-need-to-curb-emissions-adapt\/","title":{"rendered":"#Europe floods show need to curb emissions, adapt"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Europe floods show need to curb emissions, adapt<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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BRUSSELS \u2014 Just as the European Union was announcing plans to spend billions of euros to contain climate change, massive clouds gathered over Germany and nearby nations to unleash an unprecedented storm that left death and destruction in its wake.<\/p>\n

Despite ample warnings, politicians and weather forecasters were shocked at the ferocity of the precipitation that caused flash flooding that\u00a0claimed more than 150 lives\u00a0<\/a>this week in the lush rolling hills of Western Europe.<\/p>\n

Climate scientists say the link between extreme weather and global warming is unmistakable and the urgency to do something about climate change undeniable.<\/p>\n

Scientists can\u2019t yet say for sure whether climate change caused the flooding, but they insist that it certainly exacerbates the extreme weather that has been on show from the western U.S. and Canada to Siberia to Europe\u2019s Rhine region.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a clear link between extreme precipitation occurring and climate change,\u201d Wim Thiery, a professor at Brussels University, said Friday.<\/p>\n

\"People
People use rubber rafts in floodwaters after the Meuse River broke its banks during heavy flooding in Liege, Belgium, Thursday, July 15, 2021. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Potsdam, referring to the recent heat records set in the U.S. and Canada, said \u201csome are so extreme that they would be virtually impossible without global warming..\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking them all together, said Sir David King, chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, \u201cthese are casualties of the climate crisis: we will only see these extreme weather events become more frequent.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Diederik Samsom, the European Commission\u2019s Cabinet chief behind this week\u2019s massive proposals to spend billions and force industry into drastic reforms to help cut the bloc\u2019s emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% this decade, this week\u2019s disaster was a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

\"A
A regional train sits in the flood waters at the local station in Kordel, Germany, Thursday July 15, 2021 after it was flooded by the high waters of the Kyll river. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cPeople are washed away in Germany \u2026 and Belgium and the Netherlands, too. We are experiencing climate change,\u201d he said on a conference call of the European Policy Centre think tank. \u201cA few years ago, you had to point to a point in the future or far away on the planet to talk about climate change. It\u2019s happ<\/a>ening now \u2014 here.\u201d<\/p>\n

And climate scientists point toward two specific things that have contributed to this week\u2019s calamity.<\/p>\n

First, with every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit rise in temperature, the air can take in 7% more humidity. It can hold the water longer, leading to drought, but it also leads to an increase in dense, massive rainfall once it releases it.<\/p>\n

\"A
A man rows a boat down a residential street after flooding in Angleur, Province of Liege, Belgium, Friday July 16, 2021. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another defining factor is the tendency for storms to hover over one place for far longer than usual, thus dumping increasing amounts of rain on a smaller patch of the world. Scientists say warming is a contributing factor there, too. A jet stream of high winds six miles high helps determine the weather over Europe and is fed by temperature differences between the tropics and the Arctic.<\/p>\n

Yet as Europe warms \u2014 with Scandinavia currently experiencing an unusual heat wave \u2014 the jet stream is weakened, causing its meandering course to stop, sometimes for days, Thiery said.<\/p>\n

He said such a phenomenon was visible in Canada too, where it helped cause a \u201cheat dome\u201d in which temperatures rose to 122 F.<\/p>\n

\"This
This image provided on Friday, July 16, 2021 by the Cologne district government shows the Blessem district of Erftstadt in Germany. Rescuers were rushing Friday to help people trapped in their homes in the town of Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAnd it is causing the heavy rain that we have seen in Western Europe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically curbed in the coming decades, the amount of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases already in the atmosphere means extreme weather is going to become more likely.<\/p>\n

Experts say such phenomena will hit those areas that aren\u2019t prepared for it particularly hard.<\/p>\n

\"Rescue
Rescue workers look down from a balcony as floodwaters run down a main street in Pepinster, Belgium, Thursday, July 15, 2021. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe need to make our built environment \u2014 buildings, outdoor spaces, cities \u2014 more resilient to climate change,\u201d said Lamia Messari-Becker, a professor of engineering at the University of Siegen.<\/p>\n

Those that don\u2019t adapt will risk greater loss of life and damage to property, said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geoscientist at the reinsurance giant Munich Re.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe events of today and yesterday or so give us a hint that we need to do better with respect to being ready for these these type of events,\u201d he said. \u201cThe events themselves are not really unexpected, but the order of magnitude probably has surprised some.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Europe floods show need to curb emissions, adapt” BRUSSELS \u2014 Just as the European Union was announcing plans to spend billions of euros to contain climate change, massive clouds gathered over Germany and nearby nations to unleash an unprecedented storm that left death and destruction in its wake. Despite ample warnings, politicians and weather forecasters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":303517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/Belgium-flooding-comp-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[112185,71920,43485,28340,72705,33536],"class_list":["post-303516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-19-21","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-floods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}