The change is now
–Several powerful weather phenomena rocked the planet in the space of a month. Countries hitherto relatively untouched by very hot weather or torrential rains have been affected, a sign that climate change is taking hold everywhere.–
An unprecedented deadly heatwave in Canada, devastating fires in the American West, catastrophic floods in Germany and Belgium, deluge in China and India … Since June, summer has been marked by natural disasters in cascade, the magnitude and frequency of which could have been worsened by global warming, according to many climatologists, who have been warning for decades.
Drought in the United States
From mid-June, the western United States sent the first alerts. The high temperatures combined with the lack of rainfall for the past two years have resulted in extreme drought. On June 21, it was 50 ° C in Palm Springs, 48 ° C in Phoenix, 47 ° C in Las Vegas, 42 ° C in Salt Lake City, 41 ° C in Billings and even 39 ° C in Reno, near 1,400 meters above sea level. From California to Montana, passing through Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado, the “heat dome” suffocated tens of millions of Americans for a week. More than 55% of the territory of the great West (made up of nine states) then plunged into a state of drought “extreme” Where “exceptional”.
California has triggered a state of emergency and authorities have called on residents to “Voluntary efforts to conserve water”, such as shorter showers. Some regions with cracked soils and dry rivers risk becoming unlivable.
Heat Dome in Canada
At the end of June, western Canada was caught under a “heat dome” caused by high pressures trapping hot air. The country broke its all-time high temperature record several times, which finally stood at 49.6 ° C in the village of Lytton on June 30. A few days later, the small town was almost completely devastated by flames. The US states of Washington and Oregon have also been affected by the extreme temperatures. The exact human toll is not yet known but amounts to at least several hundred deaths.
On the wildlife side, University of British Columbia researcher Chris Harley estimated that a billion coastal water animals may have perished in the heat wave. The mussels simply cooked on their rocks during low tides, like a giant plancha. However, they can withstand temperature peaks of up to 30 ° C. But west of Vancouver, thermal cameras showed the black seashells had reached 50 ° C. For miles on the Pacific coast, the mussels were open, dead animals inside. Same tragic fate for other crustaceans and starfish.
This heat wave would have been “almost impossible” without the global warming caused by humans, according to scientists at the World Weather Attribution, an initiative bringing together experts from various research institutes around the world. According to them, climate change has made this event at least 150 times more likely to occur.
Fires in North America
Fueled by an alarming drought, the fire season is just beginning in the American West and thousands of firefighters are already fighting nearly 80 huge blazes. They had already consumed at the beginning of the week more than 4,700 km² of vegetation.
The most impressive is the “Bootleg Fire” in Oregon, which burned in two weeks the equivalent of the city of Los Angeles in vegetation and forests. “The fire is so big and it creates so much energy that it has started to generate its own climate”, according to Marcus Kauffman, of the state’s forest management service. The fire created a pyrocumulus cloud, also known as a “firestorm,” which can produce rain, hail, lightning, gusts and even tornadoes. In the neighboring state of California, several villages had to be evacuated in the face of the progression of the flames of the “Dixie Fire”.
Fires have also been increasing in Canada for nearly a month following the high heat. Thousands of residents have been ordered to evacuate British Columbia and a state of emergency has been declared in this western province.
Floods in Europe
On July 14 and 15, impressive floods left at least 209 people dead in Germany and Belgium, as well as dozens of people missing. The rivers suddenly burst from their beds under the effect of torrential rains, invading dozens of inhabited areas. A landslide swept away part of the German municipality of Erftstadt. Floods also cause damage in Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The precipitation reached in two days the equivalent of two months of rain, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
“For the moment, we cannot say with certainty that this event is linked to climate change”, but such extreme phenomena become “More frequent and more likely” because of warming, according to Kai Schröter, a hydrologist at the University of Potsdam. Even more direct, “The warming of the climate plays an obvious role in the intensification of the rains”, underlined in Release Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, professor of climatology at the Catholic University of Louvain and former vice-president of the IPCC.
Bad weather in Asia
In China, the center of the country is currently affected by huge floods, which have already left at least 50 dead and several missing since July 16. Henan, China’s third largest province in terms of population with nearly 100 million inhabitants, suffered record rains that turned the streets into torrents of mud. Zhengzhou, its capital, was particularly affected on the evening of July 20. Part of the metro was submerged and hundreds of vehicles were swallowed up. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated.
In India, after the heatwave, the monsoon took its toll. Victims of lightning, collapses of flooded buildings or landslides, dozens of people perish each year due to seasonal rains. But 2021 is marked by an intensification of meteorological phenomena. The country is struggling between bad weather and a historic heatwave. New Delhi recorded its highest temperatures since 2012 in early July. The Bombay region is also hit by the phenomenon.
Update : Saturday July 24 at 10:35 am, with the floods in Bombay (India)
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