Already facing a warmer and humid climate, the United Kingdom is likely to experience summer temperatures exceeding 40 ° C, even if global warming is contained to 1.5 ° C, warned, Thursday, July 29, meteorologists.
This threshold corresponds to the most ambitious objective set by the Paris agreement to limit global warming compared to the pre-industrial era, which the British presidency of the COP26, scheduled for November in Glasgow, hopes to maintain. ” desire “. It is, however, according to many scientists, out of reach.
On the occasion of the publication of the annual report on the UK climate for the year 2020, the Managing Director of the Royal Meteorological Society, Liz Bentley, pointed out that the planet is already experiencing extreme heat resulting from a warming of 1, 1 to 1.2 ° C. “If we add another 0.3 °VS “, heat waves “Will become more and more intense – we will probably see 40 °C in the United Kingdom, although we have never experienced this kind of temperature ”, she said.
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The highest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom is 38.7 ° C, a record recorded on July 25, 2019 in Cambridge. “By reaching 1.5 °C of global warming, it will not only be something that we will see once or twice ”, corn “Something that we will see on a regular basis”, she added. Mike Kendon, the author of the report, judged on the BBC that observing 40 ° C in summer in the UK is “Plausible”, stressing that global warming is already manifesting itself in the country.
According to the report, 2020 is the third warmest, fifth wettest, and eighth sunniest. The average temperature in winter was 5.3 ° C, or 1.6 ° C higher than the average observed between 1981 and 2010. With 34 degrees reached for six consecutive days, at the beginning of August 2020, the south of England has experienced one of the biggest heat waves of the past sixty years. According to Mike Kendon, 34 ° C has been exceeded in seven of the last ten years in the UK, compared to seven of the last fifty years previously.
COP26, “last chance”
For the US special envoy on climate, John Kerry, the COP26 in Glasgow constitutes “The last chance to minimize damage” linked to climate change. “Glasgow is our last hope to avoid the worst consequences and that the planet does not change in a way even more difficult to predict”, he warned, Thursday, during an exchange in London with the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
The UK experienced torrential rains last weekend which resulted in flooding in London. Several parts of the world have recently experienced such extreme weather events – from deadly floods in Germany in mid-July to devastating floods in Afghanistan on Thursday. “We will now have to manage water efficiently”, estimated John Kerry, and ” adapt “ country infrastructures, in “Building dikes, walls, barriers, pump systems”.
According to Tom Burke, chair of the E3G environmental think tank, COP26 will be the first edition of this global climate conference where “The science of climate change has been validated by events”. “It’s not just what scientists say, it’s what people experience”, he said on Thursday, calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “To be more visible” at the diplomatic level before COP26.
