The Paper's reporter Liu Dong
"We are now not only in 2022 AD, but also in the third year of the climate crisis era. This is a whole new era in the history of mankind and in the history of the earth. ”
The person who said this was Wei Ke, an associate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In a public speech in June, the 42-year-old meteorologist gave a selling expression to the audience and slowly said, "Why the third year?" You'll know it when you listen. ”
Will 2022 be the hottest year ever? At least for many places, the months that have just passed June and July have been. In June, the world's terrestrial regions saw the hottest temperatures since systematic human meteorological records were recorded in the late 1850s, with record-breaking temperatures, droughts, wildfires, torrential rains and floods sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in parts of continental Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In this extremely hot summer, more and more records are being set. It is important to note, however, that the increasingly frequent and intense climate crisis is by no means beginning this year, nor is it unique to a single country or region, but is a global and persistent phenomenon.
What's wrong with our world? According to a 2020 report released by the United Nations Disaster Prevention and Reduction Agency, the frequency of disasters in the first two decades of the 21st century has increased significantly compared to the previous two decades, of which high temperature events have increased by 232%, heavy rains have increased by 134%, and various storms have increased by 97%, and China is the country with the highest number of reported climate disasters.
Behind these disasters is a problem that we must face – global temperatures continue to rise at an accelerating rate. For every ordinary person, climate change is no longer a distant and unrelated thing. Our generation is and will be experiencing more climate crises.
"If we use life as a metaphor for climate anomalies, climate anomalies that occurred in nature in the past were equivalent to people living a hundred years to die, and now we experience climate change, which is equivalent to dying within two weeks. In the face of people who will leave at the age of 100, we will not worry about sorrow, but if we will die within two weeks, we must find the reason, do we have to be sent to the hospital immediately? This is the problem we are facing now. Wei Ke told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn).
By reviewing the most comprehensive database of more than 500 extreme weather events on climate professional websites to date, as well as interviews with authoritative scientists in related fields, The Paper hopes to sound the strongest alarm bell for readers: the huge carbon emissions from human activities may be taking the planet's climate to catastrophic new extremes, and scientific research shows that many of the most serious extreme weather events are almost impossible without climate change.
All of this clearly shows that we are already at very high risk of climate degradation.
A man on the roof of Camarillo, California, watches a looming fire.
The formation of the climate crisis
Weike's "association" with meteorology began in 1998. At that time, just after the end of the college entrance examination, he turned on the TV and saw the news of rescue and disaster relief in the south. That year, not only the Yangtze River, Qiantang River and Minjiang River in the south, but also the Songhua River and the Nen River in the northeast also suffered floods in the whole basin. The rescue department finally requisitioned a large barge carrying coal on the Yangtze River and blocked the breach with a wreck.
The picture of the military and civilians shoulder to shoulder on the TV, people leaning on people, and blocking the flood with their bodies made this boy born and raised in the north feel excited, immediately became curious about meteorological and environmental issues, filled in the volunteer of meteorological dynamics major, and has since become associated with meteorology.
The real awareness of the importance of climate change was the 2003 heatwave event in Europe. According to statistics, the heat that lasted for six weeks caused at least 75,000 deaths. That year, Wei Ke was studying for a doctorate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and began to systematically study and study the problem of climate change.
After graduating with a doctorate, Wei Ke entered the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. What really touched him to come out to do popular science was a very heavy rainstorm a few years ago. That year, his first child was only a month old.
"It was raining heavily outside that day, and one of my cousins was driving back, and we were particularly worried that something would happen to him, and then something really happened, but fortunately there was no danger to life, but others were not so lucky that night." Wei Ke recalled.
"Among those who drowned, there were also fathers of children, and I felt that as a father, I could feel the pain of the broken family." At that time, I wanted to say that if someone could remind them not to go out, or what to do if it rained so heavily, (maybe it would have a different ending.) Of course, I'm not blaming them. Maybe our whole society, everyone has not really regarded such an extreme weather event as a very important thing, but that time still had a great impact on me. He said.
Wei Ke was not tall, always unhurried and calm in his speech, and always had a smile on his face, which made people feel willing to listen. But when he talked about this past, his emotions were obviously a little excited.
In fact, even on a global scale, there are not many scientists who are willing to adhere to popular science for a long time, and most scientists believe that popular science is both thankless and has no direct benefit to career development.
Wei Ke continued, "Then I slowly realized that today's society is full of gossip and entertainment, which firmly occupies the public's attention, and if scientists don't do something that is really in the public interest, the public may never be exposed to [climate change]. That's when I started doing popular science, and along the way, I met many like-minded scientists. ”
Whether climate change is really happening has been debated around the world in the early years. Although there is no longer much debate about this issue as more and more scientific research emerges, there are still people who are skeptical about climate change.
In this regard, Wei Ke explained from the perspective of atmospheric physics that the Earth's climate does change. In general, the earth gets the sun's short-wave radiation from the sun, and then releases long-wave radiation, and the two energies reach an equilibrium, which makes the earth's climate in a stable state, as long as this balance is broken, it produces a climate movement in a certain direction, resulting in climate anomalies.
There are many reasons that can lead to climate anomalies, such as the movement of the Earth's plates and volcanic eruptions, which can bring about global climate anomalies. If we examine the history of the Earth, we will find that the Earth has not been ice for most of the time, and there have been several large ice ages, and we are now in the middle of one of them (quaternary ice age); For at least fifty thousand years to come, this state would have been stable, but the emergence of humans has changed this process.
"If we look at the evolution of global carbon dioxide levels over the past 800,000 years, we will find that it has varied between two values, with the lowest not falling below 170 ppm (parts per million, a percentage concentration) and the highest not exceeding 300 ppm, but in the last hundred years, human activity has rapidly raised this value to more than 420 ppm today." If this rate of change is compared with the fastest increase in the last interglacial period, the current speed should be more than a hundred times, or even a thousand times, of natural processes. Wei Ke said.
In 2000, Nobel laureate in chemistry Paul Krutzen proposed the geological concept that the earth is now in a new era, the "Anthropocene", to distinguish it from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and highlight the impact of human activities on the earth. Although there is no consensus in the scientific community about the beginning of this period, as more and more scientists recognize it, Weike believes that it will soon become a standard scientific concept.
Climate change caused by human activities is fundamentally different from natural climate change in the history of the earth in two ways: one is the difference in time scale, and the other is the difference in the causes of occurrence. That is the fundamental problem we face today.
On 18 May 2022, the World Meteorological Organization released the State of the World's Climate Report 2021, announcing that the average temperature in the world today is 1.11°C higher than before the Industrial Revolution, clearly showing that we are in a warming world.
In this warming world, greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activities absorb more solar heat and provide more energy for the climate system, resulting in a variety of serious extreme weather disasters, most notably high temperature heat waves and wildfires. Hotter air can hold more water vapor — about 7 percent more per 1°C increase — which means more intense rainstorms and greater flooding. The oceans absorb most of the planet's heat, while warm oceans fuel the formation of more powerful hurricanes and typhoons. Melting polar glaciers and swelling hot seawater pushed up sea levels, allowing storms to hit deeper inland.
As early as December 12, 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on countries to enter a "climate emergency". If this event is used as a starting point, Weike believes that 2020 can be regarded as the first year of the global climate crisis, then this year is the three years of the climate crisis.
"When people talk about some major crisis, there is always an important point in time, in the past people always thought that climate change is a long after, and I think the UN's call is to let all humanity find a sense of urgency and ritual that has reached a crisis."
Climate disasters have swept the globe
"Friends who care about the climate and environment, in the past two years, may perceive that there seem to be more and more disasters, not only many types, complete varieties, but also more and more serious." Many people are wondering, what is wrong with our world? In every popular science lecture on climate change, Wei Ke will use this to open.
Wei Ke wrote a popular science book last year about the impact of climate change on living things, and in preparation he found more and more material - climate change affects almost all life on Earth.
"I had planned to write a book, but I ended up writing a set of four books, and there was a lot of material left. Friends say don't write, and then write we can't afford to buy. Wei Ke laughed.
While the effects of every extreme weather event are mostly localized, there is no doubt that the effects of climate change are global. Scientists are increasingly concerned that climate change is making extreme weather crises more numerous and severe, and that eventually all places will not be spared.
Since 2022 alone, climate disasters have swept the world, and a succession of extreme weather events have become the headlines of the world's news. Record-breaking temperatures, droughts and wildfires hit North America, Europe, India and Pakistan; Torrential rains and floods swept through Seoul, South Korea, Sydney, Australia, Bangladesh, South Africa and Brazil.
From the perspective of global observations, the heating trend in Europe, especially in Western Europe, is particularly obvious. In July 2019, temperatures in Paris, France, reached 42.6°C, and in July this year, London reached an unprecedented 40.2°C. At the same time, the scope and magnitude of the temperature surge is also increasing, and the high temperature is "accompanied" by events such as large-scale droughts and wildfires that are rare in the history of many countries.
In North America, after last year's record extreme heat weather in western North America, high temperatures are making a comeback this year, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data shows that July may be the hottest in the united states for the same period ever.
While droughts and wildfires have become commonplace in the Western United States, what fewer people know is that the entire Midwest is in the midst of a massive drought that has lasted for 23 years, the worst drought crisis the land has experienced in 1,200 years.
Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States (located on the border between Nevada and Arizona, 48 kilometers southeast of Las Vegas, formed by the Hoover Dam blocking the waters of the Colorado River, with a storage capacity close to the Three Gorges) has dropped to only one-third of the normal level, so that it will force the normal operation of the Largest Dam in the United States, the Hoover Dam, at any time, affecting the water and power generation of 40 million people in 7 states in the power supply area.
As for South America, on May 27 this year, the northeast region of Brazil fell in 24 hours of rainfall for the same period of the previous year for 22 days. A week of torrential downpours led to flooding and landslides that killed at least 133 people and displaced tens of thousands.
Asia, on the other side of the Pacific, home to nearly two-thirds of humanity, is suffering from a climate crisis of as much severity as elsewhere.
In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, and climate change accelerated the storm surge, causing seawater to crash inland, killing more than 7,000 people. India and Pakistan experienced early March and April of this year the hottest weather since 122 years of meteorological records.
China is one of the countries in the world that has reported the most climate disasters. In May 2019, there was a severe drought in the southwest. In 2020, floods flooded the toes of the famous Leshan Giant Buddha statue for the first time. In 2021, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, experienced a "once-in-a-millennium" extreme rainfall event.
In Africa, the ancient home of humanity, South African President Ramaphosa called the april 2022 floods "the greatest tragedy we've ever seen" that killed hundreds of people and led South Africa to declare a state of disaster for the country at one point. Previously, in 2018, Cape Town once triggered a "zero day" event in which the city would run out of water due to a three-year abnormal drought.
And in Australia, forest fires from late 2019 to early 2020 were recognizable from space, and months of wildfires killed or displaced nearly three billion animals.
These extreme weather are not just numbers, behind each data is a living story of communities, families, and individuals who have experienced the severe blows of extreme weather events.
What's more, these climate-driven events are not alone, but are also mixed with other major challenges of our time – such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which have dealt the deadliest blows to many of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
Jiang Tong, principal author of working group II of the fifth and sixth reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), professor at the School of Geographical Sciences of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and dean of the Institute of Disaster Risk Research, told The Paper that the most important conclusion of the IPCC's latest report is: "Human activities have unquestionably triggered a global climate crisis; The world is about to miss out on the window of opportunity to achieve the 1.5- or 2-degree warming control target, and the climate factors that affect it are intensifying in all regions of the world, regardless of temporal and spatial variation. ”
Jiang Tong further added, "Nearly half of the world's population is in a highly vulnerable environment to climate change. Humanity needs to take swift and effective action to ensure sustainable development. Once the temperature rises above 1.5 degrees, it may cause many irreversible effects. ”
Wei Ke uses a more vivid metaphor to describe the dangerous situation we are in at the moment: "We are facing an unknown, we are standing on the top of a mountain, we know that there must be a cliff in front of us, but we don't know where the cliff is, there is a fog around, scientists estimate that the cliff in front of us is probably at a position of 1.5 degrees, which is the concept of a critical point, and if the heating continues to increase to a certain extent, it will not be able to return." ”
Image source: Carbon Brief website
Image source: Carbon Brief website
Climate change is the biggest driver
If we take a holistic look at the climate crisis at the global level, we will find that the severity and speed of change of the crisis have exceeded the imagination of many.
Carbon Brief, a global meteorological professional website, analyzed more than 500 of the most comprehensive climate science studies to date and found that humanity's vast carbon emissions are pushing the climate to new and crisis extremes. If climate change were not human-induced, many of the worst climate disaster events would be nearly impossible.
Wu Yixiu, project director of the Yike Circular Technology Promotion Center in Pudong, Shanghai and former head of the climate communication program at the nonprofit, pointed out to The Paper that scientists around the world are now trying to respond to one of the most pressing questions: the extent to which climate change affects a particular extreme weather event. Such studies are also known as climate attribution studies.
Scientists have answered this question by using weather records and computer models to compare two "different worlds," one is the one we live in, and the other is the world before the massive burning of fossil fuels and rising temperatures. The researchers calculated the specific effects of climate change by assessing how often a particular extreme weather event occurs in both worlds.
Key findings from the more than 500 studies include that at least 12 major extreme weather events over the past 20 years would be nearly impossible to occur in the past 20 years without human-induced climate change, spanning different parts of the globe and including different types of extreme weather events, such as the 2021 attack on the extreme heat "hot dome" in northwestern North America. "Without climate change, this would be almost impossible. But if global temperatures rise by 2°C, this once-unimaginable crisis would occur on average once every 10 years.
Of the 500 extreme weather events and trends in the database, 71 percent were thought to be more likely or more severely affected by climate change, including 93 percent of heat waves, 68 percent of droughts, and 56 percent of flooding storm events.
For example, a "rapid attribution" study found that the record-breaking heat wave in the UK on 18 July 2022 was "at least 10 times more likely" to occur due to climate change. Deadly floods in July 2021 that killed 243 people in Germany and Belgium have made it 9 times more likely that climate change will happen.
Another study found that in many areas, the anomalous extreme heat that is now occurring "won't occur for thousands of years" had climate change not occurred. In particular, some places that are usually cold heat up the fastest. In 2020, russia's Siberia experienced unusually high temperatures, and the small town of Shangyansk in the Arctic Circle set a record high of 38°C in June.
The oceans absorb most of the heat from the climate crisis, with the result that marine life and billions of people dependent on the ocean are severely affected, and wildlife is dead, while new diseases are also erupted from human-farmed shellfish. Scientists estimate that almost 90 percent of today's ocean heatwaves are caused by climate change, such as the one that occurred in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand between 2017 and 2018 as "almost impossible without human impacts."
"We're in an era of (climate) destruction, and that's been the case for decades." Dr Fredi Otto of Imperial College London told The Guardian: "This is something we see clearly in scientific research, but it is not reflected in policy. ”
Most worryingly, all of this is happening at a time when the Earth's average temperature is currently only rising by about 1°C. Scientists say the supercharging effects of climate change on extreme weather are happening at an "alarming rate." Based on experience to date, global temperatures are currently rising in orbit by at least 2.5°C, which will bring greater crisis and destruction than the Earth has already suffered today.
On August 11, heavy rain fell in the Seoul area of South Korea.
The cost of the climate crisis
This summer, Wei Ke took his 6-year-old daughter back to a relative's house in Qingdao for the summer vacation, and consciously took her to the streets during the day.
"My daughter was very upset and took a few steps to tell me that the heat was too much to bear." Wei Ke said.
From June to July this year, many parts of China suffered a sustained heat wave, and as of August 11, the number of days in Shanghai this summer that exceeded 40 °C has reached six days, making it the most recorded year in history (officials say it is still possible to reach more than 40 °C in the next few days). Since meteorological records began in 1873, Shanghai has had 20 extreme heat events above 40°C, of which 18 occurred after 2000 and 6 occurred in 2022.
With the increase in extreme weather events, more and more people are becoming aware of the consequences of the climate crisis.
This consequence began but is by no means limited to the impact on human health, and a large-scale study of 732 sites in 43 countries at the University of Bern in Switzerland yielded a preliminary conclusion: from 1991 to the summer of 2018, more than 100,000 people died each year in the last 30 years as a result of the heat wave alone, resulting in millions of deaths, with mortality rates rising significantly on all continents.
Some places have been particularly hard hit. In Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru, about three-quarters of heat deaths are caused by climate change. In Kuwait and Iran, about 66 percent of heat deaths are also attributable to the climate crisis, while in Norway, the proportion is close to 50 percent. As the population ages and the frequency of heat waves rise rapidly, the death toll in southern Europe is also on the rise. Heatwaves in southern Europe this year are estimated to have killed at least 5,000 people, more than the civilian deaths in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Another study, in particular, revealed the serious consequences of climate change for children. The study found that over the past 10 years, climate change has killed between 7,000 and 11,000 children under the age of 5 each year. In sub-Saharan Africa, researchers say heat-related child mortality rates are twice as high as in the context of climate change.
In this regard, Wu Yixiu said that in daily life, the public may have two relatively large blind spots for high temperatures: the first is that the understanding of fever is not particularly sufficient; The second is that in addition to paying attention to temperature, we should also pay attention to humidity.
"In the IPCC report, a wet bulb temperature (refers to the temperature reached when a piece of air is saturated, that is, the relative humidity reaches 100%), for example, we can tolerate 36 to 37 ° C outside now, but if the wet bulb temperature reaches 35 ° C, in fact, people can only survive in the outdoor environment for a few hours, because when the humidity is very large, the human body can no longer cool down by evaporating sweat, and the human body will immediately produce a more intense reaction and endanger life." Wu Yixiu said.
Climate change has also taken a huge economic toll, with Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas and Louisiana in 2017, causing $67 billion in damage. Extreme weather can also damage homes, businesses, roads, bridges and more, and researchers have begun to calculate these losses.
The food supply on which humanity depends is also being undermined by climate change. Between 1991 and 2017, the United States lost $27 billion worth of crops due to climate change. Climate change also played a major role in Ethiopia's drought of 2015, the worst drought in decades, affecting nearly 10 million people. In Lesotho, climate change was a "key driver" of the food crisis that swept the country in 2007.
The high temperatures also triggered forest fires, which scientists estimate have increased by 80 percent due to climate change and emitted a record 59 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Although the impact of the above research and data is already staggering. But so far, attribution studies have assessed only a fraction of the world's extreme weather events, particularly in countries and regions in the Southern Hemisphere. While these regions bear the least responsibility for the climate crisis, they are the most vulnerable.
Rising frequency and intensity of climate crises can also trigger various forms of emotional distress that affect people's mental health – creating so-called "ecological anxiety." The American Psychological Society defines it as a long-term concern about observing the consequences of climate change. In other words, people worry about what the ever-changing planet will mean to them and future generations.
According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, 68 percent of adults reported "at least a little bit of ecological anxiety," and 48 percent said climate change is having a negative impact on their daily lives.
Wei Ke in a speech on climate change science
The future is here
2020, the year that Weike considers to be the "first year of the climate crisis". The international community has set the goal of carbon neutrality, hoping to reduce global carbon emissions to an equal level of natural and all forms of absorption by the middle of this century. However, this is a very difficult task.
At present, carbon emissions around the world are still increasing. "It's like the highway speed limit is 120 (km/h) and you've overspeed to (h) 130 (km/h) but you're still accelerating and you don't know how much the highest speed will be, but now it's getting faster than before. That's where we are today. Wei Ke said metaphorically.
Will the effects of climate change continue to come faster than we think? Wei Ke's answer is yes.
What worries him, however, is that most people's understanding of climate change is still in a state of boiling frogs.
"Many people think that carbon reduction is a concern of institutions and people like the United Nations, the heads of various governments, international organizations, and the presidents of multinational companies, but in fact, carbon emission reduction is relevant to each of us, and we are the constituents of the world." If we don't do anything, there's no hope for a carbon reduction for the entire world. Wei Ke stressed.
At the end of each speech, Wei Ke will seriously think about the audience to introduce the following specific measures: such as turning off the lights, turning off the electrical appliances at any time, or changing the bath to a shower at home, changing the blow dry hair to dry the hair, changing the dry clothes into dry clothes, or we can choose more reasonable transportation, more exercise, more cycling, shrewd shopping, avoiding the impulse to buy and buy, avoiding consumption traps, or we can recycle various resources, donate items we don't use, Do a good job of garbage sorting, refuse (disposable) garbage bags. ”
Wei Ke admits that everyone can do some simple things, and these can play a different role. Perhaps the world will eventually realize that it is much less costly to act now than not to act.
At the end of the speech, Wei Ke asked slowly, "I have passed on the message of the climate crisis to you, are you ready and ready?" ”
Editor-in-Charge: Hu Zhenqing Photo Editor: Chen Feiyan
Proofreader: Yan Zhang