Floods And Heatwaves Offer Warning Of Impact Of Climate Change

[Snowy Owl]

Floods And Heatwaves Offer Warning Of Impact Of Climate Change
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/F..._Warning_Of_Impact_Of_Climate_Change_999.html
by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) June 27, 2007​

Recent floods in Asia and Britain, and heatwaves in southern Europe, show the world must be better prepared to cope with the impact of climate change, the United Nation's top disaster prevention official said Wednesday. "Heavy rainfalls in Pakistan, India and northern England and heatwaves in Greece, Italy and Romania are indications of what might happen more frequently and more severely across the globe as a consequence of the global warming," said Salvano Briceno, director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

"We cannot wait to be taken by surprise, we know what is going to happen and we can prepare for it," he added.

The UN body is trying to convince governments to give greater priority to reducing the risks from natural disasters and increasing their populations' resilience to potentially deadly storms, floods or heatwaves.

That includes taking concrete measures such as early warning systems, building flood shelters, protecting houses as well as critical infrastructure like hospitals, schools, water and electricity supplies, and transport links.

"We are not trying to scare people but we want to alert every government of the urgency to put disaster risk reduction as a top priority of their political agenda as no country will be immune," said Briceno.

Monsoon rains in western and southern India late last week, which caused flash floods and left 144 people dead, were followed by a cyclone that ripped through neighbouring Pakistan's coastline, killing 19 people.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people in northern England were evacuated from their homes Tuesday after torrential rain claimed at least three lives and threatened to cause a dam to collapse.

At least 46 people have also died in a heatwave stretching across Greece, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, and Romania where temperatures reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

A UN panel of the world's leading climate change experts warned earlier this year that Earth was already warming and predicted severe consequences including drought, flooding, violent storms and increased hunger and disease.


'Longest ever' Greek heatwave kills five, causes long blackouts

Athens (AFP) June 27, 2007
A heatwave in Greece described by authorities as the longest in history has killed five people and caused serious electricity blackouts, officials said on Wednesday.

"The weather conditions have been unprecedented, we have never had a heat wave lasting for eight straight days," development ministry general secretary Nikos Stefanou told private Flash Radio.

The health ministry said that five people had succumbed to searing temperatures expected to hit 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in some areas, most of them pensioners with prior medical problems.
Media reports pushed the heatstroke death toll to ten.

Cooled facilities are maintained by local councils for those without air-conditioning at home and even police stations have been told to provide rest areas for pregnant women and the elderly, but Greece's electricity network has begun to buckle from the accumulated demand for power.

The Greek state-owned public power corporation (PPC) on Tuesday apologised to customers over long blackouts registered in the northern Athens suburbs of Halandri and Psychiko, and the development ministry on Wednesday said the grid's performance has been nothing short of miraculous.

"It was a miracle, the grid handled tremendous demand," Stefanou told Flash.

"The distribution network in some areas in Athens was built to handle population loads only a fifth of what they are today," he said.

National power consumption on Tuesday set an all-time record at 10,496 MW, of which 3,867 MW in the general Athens region alone, the PPC said.
In the city centre, the Athens Observatory on Tuesday marked its highest temperature at 44.8 degrees since recordings began in Greece 110 years ago, observatory metereologist Costas Lagouvardos told AFP.

The top temperature in Athens on Tuesday stood at 46.2 degrees Celsius in the northern district of Nea Filadelfia, the highest since records there began in 1955, the national weather service said.

Large sections of the capital were without electricity on Wednesday because of power transformer malfunctions in several districts, including areas near the port of Piraeus and the populous municipality of Peristeri.
The PPC has 200 crews working around the clock across the capital to remedy the problems, the company said.

The Greek army has called off exercises and civil servants were sent home early to save energy.

Dozens of wildfires have broken out in rural areas of northern, southern and central Greece and threatened homes before being brought under control, but fire risk remains high in several parts of the country.

The heatwave is expected to abate from Thursday.
earlier related report

Four dead in British floods as waters recede
London (AFP) June 27 - The death toll from floods in Britain rose to four overnight, while fears remained that a dam could burst even though water levels were receding after days of rain, officials said Wednesday.

The latest death was confirmed in Worcestershire, west central England, where police found the body of a motorist whose car was swept away by floodwater, local emergency services said.

The death came after a 14-year-old boy was swept to his death in a swollen river and a 68-year-old man was killed as he crossed a flooded road in Sheffield, northern England, according to officials Tuesday.

A man in his 20s also drowned in the northeastern city of Hull after becoming trapped up to his neck in a drain.

Meanwhile authorities in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, were still monitoring a dam which is threatening to burst. Some 700 residents were evacuated from their homes and a nearby motorway blocked off as a precaution.

A major operation went through the night to reduce water levels at Ulley Dam and rebuild parts of the dam wall. Engineers said the danger had been reduced, but was not over.

Overall floodwater levels were reported to be receding across the country, although many homes remained under water and without power as emergency services continued to help.

Parts of Britain, particularly the Yorkshire area of northern England, saw more than a month's rainfall fall in a day. Forecasters are predicting this month will be the wettest June since records began.


Source: Agence France-Presse


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Related Links
UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
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[Snowy Owl]

Re: Floods And Heatwaves Offer Warning Of Impact Of Climate Change

Urban Populations Booming
By William M. Reilly
UPI U.N. Correspondent
New York (UPI) June 27, 2007
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Urban_Populations_Booming_999.html​

The U.N. Population Fund has issued a warning as the majority of the world's population shifts from rural to urban areas that plans must be prepared now because the coming changes are too large and will happen too fast to allow for simply reacting. the first time in history, more than half of the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas, said the "UNFPA State of World Population 2007."

The increase in the urban share of total population is inevitable, but it can also be positive, said the 100-page report.

No country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanization, it said.

Cities concentrate poverty, but they also represent poor people's best hope of escaping it.

The report released at U.N. World Headquarters in New York says while cities have pressing immediate concerns, merely reacting to challenges as they arise is not the answer.

It looks beyond current problems with specific attention to poverty reduction and sustainability while examining the implications of impending urban growth.

It is a call to action, the Population Fund said.

"Although attention has been focused on mega-cities, most urban growth will be in smaller towns and cities," the UNFPA said. "Their capacities will need considerable strengthening to meet the future challenge. Action now by governments, civil society and the international community can make a huge difference to social, environmental and living conditions."

Cities embody the environmental damage done by modern civilization; yet experts and policymakers increasingly recognize the potential value of cities to long-term sustainability. If cities create environmental problems, they also contain the solutions.

"The potential benefits of urbanization far outweigh the disadvantages." it said. "The challenge is in learning how to exploit its possibilities."

So far, attention has centered mostly on immediate concerns, problems such as how to accommodate the poor and improve living conditions; how to generate employment; how to reduce cities' ecological footprint; how to improve governance; and how to administer increasingly complex urban systems.

These are all obviously important questions, the report said, but they shrink in comparison with the problems raised by the impending future growth of the urban population.

Up until now, the Population Fund says policymakers and civil society organizations have reacted to challenges as they arise.

"This is no longer enough," the report said.

A "pre-emptive approach is needed if urbanization in developing countries is to help solve social and environmental problems, rather than make them catastrophically worse."

The report points to the imminent doubling of the developing world's urban population and discusses what needs to be done to prepare for this massive increase.

It looks more closely at the demographic processes underlying urban growth in developing areas and their policy implications. It specifically examines the consequences of the urban transition for poverty reduction and sustainability.

It looks at the differing conditions and needs of poor urban women and men, and the obstacles they face as they strive to claim their rights and realize their potential as productive members of the new urban world.
"As the population of smaller cities increases, their thin managerial and planning capacities come under mounting stress," the UNFPA said.

"New ways will have to be found to equip them to plan ahead for expansion, to use their resources sustainably and to deliver essential services."

One of the report's key observations is poor people will make up a large part of future urban growth.

This has generally been overlooked, at great cost, the Population Fund said.

"Most urban growth now stems from natural increase (more births than deaths) rather than migration. But wherever it comes from, the growth of urban areas includes huge numbers of poor people. Ignoring this basic reality will make it impossible either to plan for inevitable and massive city growth or to use urban dynamics to help relieve poverty."

If any message was clear throughout the report it was "Urban and national governments, together with civil society, and supported by international organizations, can take steps now that will make a huge difference for the social, economic and environmental living conditions of a majority of the world's population."

Three initiatives were listed as a minimum: Respecting the rights of the poor to the city; the need for a longer-term and broader vision of the use of urban space to reduce poverty and promote sustainability and population institutions and specialists can and should play a key role in supporting community organizations, social movements, governments and the international community in improving the nature and form of future urban expansion.


Source: United Press International
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[Snowy Owl]

Re: Floods And Heatwaves Offer Warning Of Impact Of Climate Change

2007 seen as second warmest year as climate shifts
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29318569.htm

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO, June 29 (Reuters)​

This year is on track to be the second warmest since records began in the 1860s and floods in Pakistan or a heatwave in Greece may herald worse disruptions in store from global warming, experts said on Friday.


"2007 is looking as though it will be the second warmest behind 1998," said Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, which provides data to the U.N.'s International Meteorological Organization.


"It isn't far behind ... it could change, but at the moment this looks unlikely," he told Reuters, based on temperature records up to the end of April.


Jones had predicted late last year that 2007 could surpass 1998 as the warmest year on record due to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels and an El Nino warming of the Pacific.


Almost all climate experts say that the trend is towards more droughts, floods, heatwaves and more powerful storms. But they say that individual extreme events are not normally a sign of global warming because weather is, by its nature, chaotic.


"Severe events are going to be more frequent," said Salvano Briceno, director of the Geneva-based secretariat of the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.


The 10 warmest years in the past 150 years have all been since 1990. Last year ranked number six according to the IMO. NASA, which uses slightly different data, places 2005 as warmest ahead of 1998.


STORMS


Among extreme events, more than 500 people have died in storms and floods in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India in the past week.


Temperatures in Greece reached 46 C (114.80F) this week as part of a heatwave across parts of southern Europe. Parts of China have also had a heat wave in recent days.


And torrential rains have battered northern England and parts of Texas, where Austin has had its wettest year on record so far.


The U.N. climate panel, drawing on the work of 2,500 scientists, said this year that it was "very likely" that human activities led by use of fossil fuels were the main cause of a warming in the past half-century.


It gave a "best estimate" that temperatures will rise 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) this century.


Briceno told Reuters that the world had to work out better policies to prepare for disasters, saying that climate change was adding to already increasing risks faced by a rising human population of about 6.6 billion people.


Irrespective of warming, many people were cramming into cities, for instance, settling in plains where there was already a risk of floods or moving to regions vulnerable to droughts.


"We need to reduce all the underlying risk factors, such as by locating communities out of hazard-prone areas," he said. "We now have a clearer picture of what is going to happen and it's urgent that governments give this higher priority."


In Germany, average temperatures for the 12 months to May 2007 smashed records for the past century, raising questions about whether climate change was quickening, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.


"If this trend continues in the near future, we will be experiencing an acceleration of global warming in Germany so far unexpected by climate scientists," it said in a statement.

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