Climate Change Crushes With Increased Weather Disasters Occureed In Past Decades Making Us To Act Urgently

Well friends, severe hurricane has hit US causing a lot of damage to life and property but as friends and family keep marking themselves safe in such gory catastrophes and troubling times on popular social media, it lightens the heart momentarily.

No doubt, as the records of earth’s temperature display a constant climb in recent decades, strength of disasters caused by such rising trends has also swelled as a result of it and has wiped out a considerable strength in humans alone.

WMO has released an atlas recently that covers a time period from 1970 through 2019 and which describes the scale of such events.

Such hazards have claimed lives of around 2 million people while economic suffrage revolves around $3.64 trillion.

WMO Secretary General Professor Petteri Taalas has been overcome with fear stating, ”The number of weather, climate and water extremes are increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world as a result of climate change”,

He made addition, ”That means more heatwaves, drought and forest fires such as those we have observed recently in Europe and North America. We have more water vapour in the atmosphere, which is exacerbating extreme rainfall and deadly flooding. The warming of the oceans has affected the frequency and area of existence of the most intense tropical storms”.

Making things worst, it has come to light that developing countries have been badly hit by such weather related disasters and droughts have been counted as the root cause behind 650,000 deaths and nasty form of temperatures has slashed 56000 lives on this planet.

Igniting hope amid such surging gloom etched with polluted mist, as per the study covering recent decades, death rate from such disasters has gone down.

Prof Taalas thinks, ”Behind the stark statistics lies a message of hope”.

“Improved multi-hazard early warning systems have led to a significant reduction in mortality. Quite simply, we are better than ever before at saving lives”.

Even though, we have managed to save more people in such weather extremes, but no respite on economic front.

During the past decade alone, per day losses was recorded at 383 million which rested at just $49 million/ day just four decades back.

2017: Year Of Economic Depression II:

In 2017 alone, a total of three major disasters struck US in form of Hurricane Harvey, Maria and Irma.

Collectively, economically, the impact of losses was measured at 35% of total losses suffered from 10 major natural disasters happened from 1970 till 2019.

The atlas hails the warning devices as effective life saving mechanisms but still, a great deal still calls to be accomplished.

Among the member countries of WMO, 193 in number, only some of them have managed to secure early warning mechanisms.

Then, as yet another misfortune, in places like Africa, South America and in some Caribbean islands, weather and hydrological networks lack functional coordination and are not found to be complementing each other for best outcome.

In words of Mamie Mizutori, who sits in the chair of special representative appointed by UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, “More lives are being saved thanks to early warning systems but it is also true that the number of people exposed to disaster risk is increasing due to population growth in hazard-exposed areas and the growing intensity and frequency of weather events”.

She continued,” More international cooperation is needed to tackle the chronic problem of huge numbers of people being displaced each year by floods, storms and drought.

We need greater investment in comprehensive disaster risk-management, ensuring that climate change adaptation is integrated in national and local disaster risk-reduction strategies”.

Her Majesty To Hear The Proceedings In Glasgow:

At the Scottish Events Campus, where world leaders would gather from November 1 through 12 in Climate Conference, including US president Joe Biden, Pope Francis and environment heart throb Greta Thunberg and around 20 thousand distinguished delegates.

In a tweet from COP-26 president Alok Sharma, he reacted “absolutely delighted” as Queen has confirmed her interest and eagerness towards the event.

The timing of the event is also crucial as a major scientific report released just last month containing harsh warning of extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding and which also disclosed the dreaded fact that about the temperature limit being violated during the decade just flown by.

In fact, in the initial review of the science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change headed by UN, has remarked “code red for humanity”.

The agenda of the conference will be to discuss major achievements and efforts put in the direction and which were outlined in the climacteric Paris Climate Agreement.

Actually, at that time, it was unanimously agreed upon to control the rise in temperature “well below” 2 degree Celsius and to make efforts to limit them to 1.5 degree Celsius.

But to our concern, temperature rise is said to have touched 3 degree Celsius.

Undoubtedly, robust security cover for the venue is also a challenge. For the purpose, 10 thousand officers will guard the streets and who would be from all across UK as Police Scotland has termed the occasion as “the most complex and complicated” ever organized in Scotland.

Floor Is Slippery:

The main brain who brainstormed the content and clauses of Paris Climate Agreement, voiced in favour of online participation too, but then, Ms. Christina Figueres also stressed upon in-person participation too, for the conference to be successful.

Concurrently, Prime Minister Boris Johnson also clarified “no downgrading of ambitions” in the context of COP-26.

This clearly means discouraging the coal power generation by 2030 alongside the pledge to plant a great number of trees.

Inviting a big wow from us, Mr. Johnson vowed, “We need to stop the world gaining another 1.5C. The risk of that is clear. The way to do that is for countries to move to net zero”.

Well friends, apparently, such sounds great but still, in a bid to thicken our net worth, there are individuals who act with greed oblivious to sizeable damage they cause to the climate which they also happen to inhabit. Take the instance of Shell company who was dragged in court in Netherlands recently.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Climate Change, Climate Conference Glasgow, COP 26, Global Warming, Hurricane Ida, Paris Climate Agreement