[Correspondence] What catastrophe could lead Europe to mass suicide?

In the end, after 99 days, the number of new coronavirus cases again exceeded 100,000.

The doubling phenomenon, which floats twice as much as the previous week, has slightly weakened, but the increase is still not significant.

As we have to get out of this trend with voluntary distance instead of the old mandatory distance, it seems that we all need to make an effort to quarantine.

I hope all readers are careful not to catch the corona virus.

In today's Mabu News, I'm going to tell you a little creepy story.

I have dealt with various disasters in Mabu News so far.

I remember talking about the catastrophes that can be caused by massive wildfires, volcanic eruptions, missing bees, and even space debris.

Today, I am going to talk about one of these disasters.

○○ from Europe, who dominated the news until last week, is today's protagonist.

Until 6 billion tons of Greenland's glaciers melted in one day, and the Alps' perennial glaciers collapsed...

This is the question Mabu News asks its readers today.

A 40 degree heatwave will become a daily routine?

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Two years ago, the British Meteorological Agency made a future forecast for 2050.

So, in 2020, 30 years later, 2050, was hypothetically predicted.

If you look at the prediction model on the left, the London area is recording a whopping 40℃, the port city of Hull also has a temperature of 38℃…

Even though it is 30 years later, it seems full of absurd temperatures.

The average summer temperature in London, England is usually less than 25 degrees.

It was only natural for everyone to think of it as a warning to the not-too-distant future.

However, in July 2022, 28 years earlier, that temperature became a reality.

Corningsby, England, smashed the highest temperature in British history, hitting 40.3°C on July 19th.

The UK Meteorological Agency has announced that new records have been broken at 34 observation points.

A heat wave of over 40°C hit, causing damage one after another.

The train tracks were bent by the heat, and the pavement melted.

It was thought that it would be possible and practically impossible for the UK to reach 40°C in 30 years, but climate change has made these extreme temperatures possible.

It's not just the UK.

In France, the highest temperature was recorded on July 19 at 64 observation areas across France.

Paris recorded the third hottest day since weather observations began at 40.1°C.

The heat wave has caused wildfires across Europe.

In the Gironde region, where Bordeaux is famous for its wine production, a forest fire burned down 20,000 hectares of forest.

Not only France, but Spain and Portugal...

Europe was engulfed in flames.

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Europe's July heatwave has been going on since June, and the EU Copernicus system analyzed that Europe in June of this year was 1.6℃ higher than the 1991-2020 average.

The Copernicus System is an Earth observation program operated jointly by the European Space Agency and the European Union.

Information on climate, ocean, atmosphere, land, and energy is being observed through satellites, and the measured data is being released to the world free of charge.

Looking beyond Europe, even on a global scale, this June was the best ever.

The picture above is a graph drawn with global temperature, and the fact that June this year was the third hottest June on record!

The graph above shows how much the surface temperature has changed by month, and the standard is the average temperature from 1991 to 2020.

When the temperature is higher than the average temperature, it is displayed in red, and when it is lower than the average temperature, it is displayed in blue.

Recently, it is noticeable that the number of moons marked in red has increased.

The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that the heat wave is the new normal.

In the future, heat waves like this will occur more frequently and will be accepted as a normal climate rather than an abnormal climate.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Europe was 48℃ in Greece in 1977, but it was replaced by 48.8℃ in Sicily last year.

If a new normal with repeated heat waves approaches, this record may be broken again soon.

The IPCC special report also warned that the heat waves this century will be more frequent, longer and more intense.

Q. Did you hear that the Meteorological Agency manipulated the graph to scare people?

Among the British who suffered from a heat wave of over 40℃, an image containing the contents of "the same summer weather forecast, but the new weather forecast design is too frightening" circulated on social media.

It was argued that the color of 40°C changed to black, creating fear of heat waves.

The British Meteorological Agency immediately fact-checked it.

First of all, the British Meteorological Agency announced that the graphics have been renewed to take into account the color-blind people, not to incite fear.

Colorblind people have trouble distinguishing colors when there is a mixture of red, green and blue.

The color scale, which used to mix blue, green, orange, and red, used by the British Meteorological Agency, has been changed to a format in which red or blue becomes darker as the temperature goes to the extremes.

The fact that it was an improvement for information accessibility, not to create fear!

If you don't act, everyone will die.

What countermeasures did Europe come up with, feeling the extreme heat wave that it had never experienced before?

At the same time, the Petersberg Climate Conference was being held in Berlin from July 17 to 19.

The Petersberg Climate Conference is an annual meeting led by Germany, and climate change leaders from all over the world attended and talked.

Leaders from 40 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, gathered and held a pre-meeting to prepare for COP27.

Do you know COP?

COP is an abbreviation for conference of Parties, which means Conference of the Parties.

It refers to a general meeting where the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meet once a year to review whether they are preparing well for the climate.

COP26 (26th meeting) was held last year in Glasgow, UK, and COP27 is held in Egypt this year.

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At this meeting, UN Secretary-General Guterres issued a warning message.

“The most disturbing thing is that we are facing a global climate crisis and yet we are not responding as a community.

” he said.

Those in charge who attended the meeting raised their voices for a joint response.

The German Chancellor stressed that he would do all he could to get away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, and the vice president of the European Investment Bank said he would increase the proportion of eco-friendly transportation infrastructure projects instead of investing in highway construction.

If we cut fossil fuels and build eco-friendly transportation infrastructure, will Europe's heatwave disappear?

What is the cause of this heat wave in Europe?

At the time of the heat wave, low pressure was distributed along the coast of Portugal in Europe.

Does air flow from high pressure to low pressure?

You could think of this as a low pressure drawing in air.

A low pressure located in Portugal absorbed the hot air from North Africa, and the warm air from North Africa was pumped to Europe, causing an unprecedented heat wave.

The problem is that the heat wave will subside only when this low pressure disappears, but he doesn't think of moving at all.

Why?

There's a huge high pressure on the European continent that completely blocks the airflow.

As the high pressure blocked it properly, the mercury in Europe boiled over.

This blocking high pressure occurs when the force of the jet stream is weakened.

And the cause of the weakening of the power of the jet stream is global warming.

This is the reason why we once again raised our voices to reduce fossil fuels at the Petersberg Conference.

Europe, America, Africa…

there is no hot place

The United States is also suffering from heat waves caused by the same causes as Europe.

A huge blocking high pressure is holding up in the eastern part of the United States, and the heatwave continues in the western part.

In Phoenix, Arizona, in the southwestern United States, mercury in June recorded a temperature of 45.6°C and in Death Valley it reached 51°C.

The deadly heatwave continues through July.

More than 100 million Americans are in the heat wave warning zone.

President Biden is also considering declaring a national emergency, but the overall economic situation is not good right now.

The situation in Africa, which provided hot air to Europe, is also serious.

The horns of Africa protruding from the east of Africa, such as Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, are suffering from the worst drought in 40 years.

Even though it is the rainy season, there is no rain, which is a serious situation.

18 million people are affected alone.

More than 7 million cattle, goats, camels, and other livestock also died due to the drought, and both people and animals are suffering from the heat wave.

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The problem is that Africa is the most populous and hottest place on the continent.

Besides, the US and Europe are relatively prosperous countries, but Africa is not.

That's why the heat wave is even more fatal.

Mabu News directly analyzed and compared the UTCI data to see how much difference there is.

The UTCI data expresses human heat stress and discomfort in outdoor conditions as a temperature index. Above 46 °C, "extreme heat stress" is indicated in dark red, and when it exceeds 38 °C, "extreme heat stress" is indicated in red. Stress" can be classified in this way.

If you draw Europe and Africa with UTCI data from August 1st of last year, it is like the picture above.

Can you see the dark red African continent engulfed in heat stress?

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This time, I did additional analysis with one year's worth of data from Africa and Europe.

We looked at the percentage of the average daily temperature exceeding 32℃ in Africa and Europe for a year. What is the result?

By June alone, over 15% of the continent is exposed to heat stress in excess of 32°C, while Europe only accounts for 1.6% of the continent at its most extreme.

Over the past five years, Europeans have experienced very intense heat stress, on average, only about three days a year, while people outside Europe are receiving it for 65 days a year.

A story that might become a true story

Randall:

The script summarized above is a part of the movie <Money Look Up>.

Have any of you seen <Money Look Up>?

To briefly explain the <money lookup>, astronomers Randall and Kate learn that the Earth will soon be destroyed by a comet impact.

I thought I should tell you about the dangers of comets, so I appeared on a live morning talk show that people watch a lot.

Randall and Kate explain the dangers of comets, but talk show hosts ignore it and treat it as gossip.

But why are you talking about <Look Up Money> all of a sudden?

July 14, 2022.

Weathercaster John Hammond appeared on GB News in the UK.

John warned of an impending heat wave.

"It could be 40 degrees early next week," he said. "I think there will be hundreds if not thousands of excess deaths."

Then the anchor says:

"I hope we all are happy about the weather. What happened to meteorologists, I guess, made all of you a bit fatalistic and harbinger of doom."

The clip, which made the movie "Look Up Money" a reality, has garnered 26 million views on Twitter as of Wednesday.

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Experts are raising their voices to warn, but one side still accepts it as if it is not important.

There are many social problems, but it seems to happen frequently, especially when it comes to climate change.

So what can we do?

The Director-General of the World Meteorological Organization said he hopes this heat wave will alarm governments and influence voting in democracies.

Democracy is a voice that urges voters to act as much as they come from individual votes.

Of course, policy changes determined by large corporations and large countries are essential, but you can't just wait for it and let it go, right?

We will all have to work little by little, little by little.

This is the letter Mabu News has prepared for you today.

Today, I summarized the heat waves in Europe caused by global warming with data.

This is what Mabu News wants to ask its readers this week.

Among the various social issues, what is the priority of subscribers?

In fact, besides the climate crisis, there are not one or two social issues that we should be concerned about, from job issues to gender equality.

Among the many issues, readers are curious to what extent the climate crisis is a priority.

Thank you for reading this long post today :) (*This article is an edited article from the Newsletter.)

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: Hye-Min Ahn

: Jun -Seok Ahn

: Do-Yeon Kim, Hae-Ram Joo