
Need proof that we're having the hottest year on record? Scorching heat is searing parts of the world, sparking wildfires and claiming lives due to heat stroke and dehydration.
1. India. The relentless heat since mid-April has claimed about 2,330 lives, overwhelming hospitals and devastating the country. As we previously reported, officials have blamed the heat on global warming.
“It’s not just another unusually hot summer—it is climate change," said Dr. Harsh Vardhan, India’s Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences. “Let us not fool ourselves that there is no connection between the unusual number of deaths from the ongoing heatwave and the certainty of another failed monsoon.”
Temperatures have neared 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius), causing roads to literally melt in New Delhi.
Heat wave in India is literally melting the roads with temps up to 48 °C / 118 °F. http://t.co/TNMvePI5Dj pic.twitter.com/j8gx5DYOz7
— Imgur (@imgur) May 26, 2015
2. Pakistan. India's neighboring country is also suffering from the horrible heat, with the city of Karachi experiencing temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius). According to BBC News, the weather has led to the deaths of nearly 700 people, mostly poor and elderly.
Making matters worse, with Pakistanis observing the holy month of Ramadan and fasting during daylight hours, an increased use of electricity for air conditioning has caused outages on their already-unstable grid.
In Video: As deadly heat wave hits Pakistan, Al Jazeera speaks to families of victims http://t.co/nk8VX7H62A pic.twitter.com/McYpZQCD18
— AJE News (@AJENews) June 22, 2015
3. The U.S. Southeast. Over on our shores, temperatures in the American South are about 5-15 degrees higher than usual with temperatures ranging between 100 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit, AccuWeather noted. Southerners, especially in southern Georgia and Florida, are also sweltering in the extreme humidity (in the upper 60s and 70s), making it feel even hotter, Weather.com reported.
A dangerous heat wave will persist across the South this week. http://t.co/F8yA3t07Hf pic.twitter.com/9fQ1W6wu63
— AccuWeather.com (@breakingweather) June 22, 2015
Those on the West Coast should also brace for extreme heat and wildfires later this month, due to a shift in the jet stream pattern.
4. Alaska. Not only are glaciers rapidly melting, the northernmost U.S. state experienced record heat at the end of May where parts of Alaska recorded temperatures higher than in Arizona.
Unseasonably high temperatures, unpredictable winds and low humidity have been the perfect storm for wildfires to break out in the state, and as of last Sunday, more than 100 new fires have ignited across the state.
#RedCross is responding to #AKfire & severe weather across the country. See the latest update: http://t.co/JxyVtLixQw pic.twitter.com/0c9i5aWR2d
— American Red Cross (@RedCross) June 17, 2015
5. Israel. Temperatures recently reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) in some parts of the country, causing fires to break out.
In the photo below, animals kept in Israeli zoos are being fed frozen treats to help cool off.
IN PICTURES: Heat wave washes over Israel http://t.co/KtVtKrNKZh pic.twitter.com/Bvw6hOrlhK
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 28, 2015
Last month, a 20-year-old tourist from Florida died after taking a fall while hiking the desert fortress of Masada on one of the hottest days of the year. The scary part? According to the Associated Press, she didn't die from injuries from the fall, but from dehydration.
6. Japan. The East Asian country has been shattering their temperature records. According to the Weather Channel, in the city of Otsu in Hokkaido, its April high of 89.4 degrees Fahrenheit (31.9 degrees Celsius) smashed the usual high of 50.9 degrees Fahrenheit (10.5 degrees Celsius). And just this month, roughly 780 people across the country were admitted into hospitals due to a heat wave, Sputnik reported. So far, two people have been reported dead due to the heat.
While the current rainfall must be a welcome reprieve, several prefectures have issued warnings of possible landslides and flooding, according to Sputnik.
About 780 hospitalized in #Japan #heatwave http://t.co/p3RFICK1ec pic.twitter.com/tM8zrBAjm6
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 16, 2015
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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