"Climate change is here, now and everywhere."
It is the lesson we can learn from the heat waves, fires and floods experienced this summer in the most disparate places in the world, according to the German climatologist
Friederike Otto
(Kiel, 1982), co-leader of the
World Weather Attribution group
(
WWA
) and author of the essay
Wütendes Wetter
(in Spanish,
El tiempo furioso
).
From his vantage point at the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford, Otto looks at everything that has happened in recent months and subscribes to the conclusions of the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of which he is also part: "We are effectively on red alert and we only have a few years to act.
What happened this summer has brought to light how ill prepared we are
. Even in rich countries like Canada (more than 500 victims of heat waves) or Germany (more than 180 deaths floods). In my country, until this summer, there was no awareness that extreme weather can be deadly. "
The last heat wave in the Mediterranean hit Spain, and in Montoro (Córdoba) the thermometers shot up above 47 degrees again. Despite the perception that this time we got rid of the worst, -in view of the fires that devastated more than 100,000 hectares in Greece and Turkey-, the climatologist warns that the 49.6 degrees recorded this year in Lytton, in British Columbia, should serve as a not-so-distant warning ...
"
Spain must be prepared for temperatures of 50 degrees
", he warns. "Unfortunately, we cannot exclude that something like this will happen in the next decade. I would say that the probability is very high. The frequency of heat waves in the Mediterranean area and in Central Europe is increasing. And the Mediterranean is also very exposed to droughts and torrential rains. Our continent has become one of the hot spots of climate change. "
Otto points out at the outset that it is not correct to blame climate change directly for each and every one of the extreme episodes we are seeing.
Hence the importance of the so-called "science of attribution", which investigates this possible cause-effect relationship.
She herself has become its great promoter at a global level with the creation of the WWA group, in which dozens of scientists from around the world have participated since 2014.
"The definition of a heat wave depends fundamentally on its location, intensity, duration and season of the year," he warns.
"But we can clearly say that all the heat waves occurring today in Europe
are more likely and more intense due to climate change
."
According to WWA estimates, a heat wave like the one that occurred in 2019 in Europe is up to a hundred times more likely due to climate change. A phenomenon like the one experienced this summer in the North American Northwest (with a spectacular jump of more than five degrees from the record temperature) would have been up to 150 times more unlikely in the pre-industrial world.
"With the science of attribution we are trying to close the gap that has always existed to demonstrate the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events," explains Otto. "
Global temperature is estimated to have risen 1.2 degrees since the industrial era
. From observations and computer simulation models, we can find out to what extent climate change has affected the intensity and frequency of these episodes." .
Until the creation of the Word Weather Attribution (co-led by Friederike Otto herself and by the Dutch meteorologist
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh
), attribution studies followed the pattern of any other scientific research, subject to academic review and linked to a period of two or three. three years. "The creation of the WWA and the evolution of the field itself, with more reliable simulation models and more powerful computers, allow us to establish the correlation now in much less time, when the impact of a certain extreme phenomenon is still visible and the debate is hot "says Otto.
The attribution inevitably carries a burden of guilt: the contribution of human activity to the increase in temperatures ... "As we know very well how much CO2 we have released into the atmosphere, we can also know what would have happened if we had not emitted those gases, "he assures.
"Basically, we are trying to figure out the difference between a world with and without CO2 emissions since the industrial age."
Friederike Otto affirms that
the line that separates science from activism is sometimes blurred
, especially when the underlying question is "in what kind of world do I want to live as a human being".
In any case, he notes that his work is guided by "transparency and scientific integrity" and is subject to criticism and review by his colleagues.
Its parallel interest has also been directed to human impact. In fact, WWA reports are becoming a tool in lawsuits for compensation of so-called "natural disasters" ("there is almost always a human factor that can increase or mitigate the risk of fatalities").
"
Heat waves should not be killing people if we were better prepared,
" says the scientist. "As in Japan or New Zealand they prepare children for how to act in the event of earthquakes, the population should be instructed on how to act in case of extreme temperatures or floods, so that it does not happen as it happened in Germany, which was launched the alert in the face of torrential rains, but no one knew how to act. In countries like Spain, children would have to be trained in schools, invest in adaptation to high temperatures and take protection measures for the vulnerable population. "
The sum of extreme phenomena of this eventful summer (without forgetting the fires in Siberia or the floods of Hurricane Ida that have reached New York) should serve, together with the IPCC report, to redouble the pressure on the Governments in the face of the Glasgow climate summit. "I am always hopeful, but deep down I doubt that this summer of extreme episodes that we have had marks a before and after in the action against climate change," says Otto.
We have the example in the German elections, where the weather has finally become a priority issue in the campaigns.
"The debate has, however, focused on individual actions: stop flying or eat less meat. But we avoid talking about the systemic change we need: stop extracting, selling and burning fossil fuels. Yes, the industry of the Oil is still the elephant in the room. An elephant clearly visible ... ".
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