Global warming revisited

In a couple of earlier articles, I have covered the subject of global warming and discussed how the phenomenon is affecting the world at large. I am revisiting the subject for the reason that new data on climate change tells us how the globe is warming beyond expectations. That is the case in particular for the three large countries of South Asia — Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. All three have lived through weather-related events that have done a great deal of harm to their economies and taken human and animal lives.

I will begin by looking at the changes that are affecting the globe. To do this, I will rely on the coverage in the Western newspapers, in particular those published in the United States. For instance, Sarah Kaplan tilted a story she wrote for The New York Times, “4 hottest days ever observed raise fears for Earth’s future”.

Global temperatures reached their highest levels in recorded history on July 29. These extraordinary temperatures marked an unprecedented hot streak that has surprised even researchers who have been looking at climate change now for decades. Since July 2022, global temperatures have consistently exceeded 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels, the level identified at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference that could bring about lasting and unpleasant change. At Paris, the participants refused to adopt a programme that was mandatory. Instead, they agreed to have all nations periodically report on the actions they had taken to reduce the amounts of carbon their activities were throwing into the atmosphere. Judging by what has been reported, few nations will be able to meet the targets experts have set for countering global warming.

Scientists around the world are busy piling up date on climate change. They have estimated Earth’s average temperature based on observations dating to 1850, and collected from 20,000 land-based stations as well as recordings ships and buoys around the globe. Using these data, they have come to the conclusion that the Earth is now hotter than it has been in more than 100,000 years before the start of the last Ice Age.

According to Johan Rockstrom, director of the Germany-based Potsdam Research for Climate Impact, the heat in 2023 showed how the natural systems that mankind depends on could buckle amid soaring temperatures. Forests showed less ability to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. Sea ice around Antarctica was reduced to record lows. What the world is seeing now, he said, is a worrying sign of the potentially approaching tipping points. Even as experts forecast an end to the current record-breaking period, they warn it may prove difficult for parts of the planet to recover from the heat of 2023. To Rockstrom, the decline in Antarctic sea is one indication of how the recent global heat may be undermining the Earth’s ability to protect against some of the worst effects of climate change. Sea ice helps cool by reflecting much of the sunlight that hits the planet back into space.

Global warming neared its all-time record on Sunday, July 28, 2024 when data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European climate monitoring institute, showed the global average temperature passing the record set in 2023. However, the record remained only for 24 hours when on July 29 temperature hit 17.16 degrees Celsius making it the second hottest day on record. The world’s oceans are also bursting with heat. Research shows that higher ocean temperatures make tropical storms more powerful. The unprecedented amount of heat trapping carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere will continue to warm the planet.

Change in global climate was hurting the world’s forest cover. In late July, Canadian authorities were fighting 310 uncontrolled world fires. Trees turned to tinder by extreme heat were fueling fast moving world fires in Northern California. One fire was set by a criminal who had spent nearly two decades in prison.

Out of the prison, he moved into a trailer park and bought a used car for $17,000, filled it up with gasoline, drover to the edge of a cliff, lighted the gas tank and then pushed it down the cliff where it quickly burnt the dried wood. The man was apprehended and was sent back to jail. The fire spread fast and became uncontrollable. Fires are not only destroying a significant acreage of forest cover in California and Canada, but they are also one of the factors that are reducing the amount of land that is under the dense forest cover in Brazil. The Amazon in Brazil is the world’s largest forest, covering tens of thousands acres of land. Its millions of trees absorb thousands of tons of carbons that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. The former president of Brazil was of the view that keeping the Amazon forest untouched may help the global community, but it was economically costly for his country. He allowed reducing the forest cover and making the land available for agriculture and animal husbandry.

These developments were not lost on the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “Extreme temperatures are no longer a one day, one week, or one month phenomenon,” he said at a news conference. Nations had to be serious about taking actions that would result if temperature increases were allowed to persist.

The effort to reduce the reach of global warming has involved the planning of events that attract millions of people who come in as spectators as in the Paris Olympics or participate in religious events such as the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Global events that attract tens of thousands of visitors who fly in by air are responsible for causing emissions of large amounts of emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. According to Madeleine Or writing for The New York Times of July 9, “The organizers of the Paris Olympic Games have outdone their predecessors to make the Paris Games the most sustainable in the decades since climate change became a concern.”

Intense heat for those who are exposed directly to the sun also poses a serious health hazard. This year, the annual Hajj at Mecca came during the summer month and reportedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people who had to face the sun while participating in various rituals performed under open skies. While the moving Islamic calendar will take the Hajj to less hot moths, this won’t happen in the case of hundreds of millions of people who have to work outside in the sun to make a living. This is the case in South Asia.