From global heating to global boiling
Decision-makers at global level are terrified of the scale of climate change
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Bogdan Matei, 28.07.2023, 14:00
The Secretary General of the United Nations, the Portuguese Antonio Guterres, pleads for immediate radical action against climate change. He says July’s record temperatures prove Earth has moved from a warming phase into an era of global boiling. Indeed, the heatwave that hit the Northern Hemisphere, Asia, Europe and America alike, turned, for example, the Mediterranean Sea into a cauldron heated by wildfires.
It’s a cruel summer, says the head of the UN, and for the entire planet, it is a disaster, he said, noting that short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board.The extreme impacts of climate change have been in line with scientists’ predictions and repeated warnings, Guterres said, adding that the only surprise is the speed of the change. In the face of tragic consequences, he repeated his call for swift and far-reaching action, taking aim once again at the fossil fuel sector. Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.
According to data provided by the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, the first three weeks of July made up the warmest three-week period, and the month is about to become the warmest July and warmest month on record. Full data for July will be available and published on August 8.
In the United States, President Joe Biden has called rising temperatures due to climate change an existential threat. For Biden, the heatwave is the number one weather-related killer, which, in his country, causes 600 deaths every year.
In Romania, where this week temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius have been doubled by storms that killed people, President Klaus Iohannis says that early warning systems for extreme weather phenomena must be continuously developed. It is particularly important to take weather warnings into account, in order to avoid tragedies, says the head of the Romanian state.
In Brussels, the European Commission has announced that it will purchase 12 more aircraft equipped for extinguishing fires and will establish its own fleet to better respond to the phenomenon. The planes will be positioned in the European countries of the Mediterranean Sea basin, where most fires occur, as is happening this year. Currently, the European Civil Mechanism operates with a transitional fleet, which includes aircraft from the member states of the Union and only two from the Commission.
