On the afternoon of next July 26, when 600,000 Parisians and visitors, all under the sun on stands, balconies and rooftops, will gather on both sides of the Seine to watch the parade of more than 10,000 athletes in 160 boats that will mark the opening of the 2024 Olympic Gamesthe authorities will have the alarms activated in the face of two enormous dangers.
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“In the daily meetings of the organizing teams, previously they only talked about anti-terrorist measures such as video cameras, metal and explosives detectors, and monitoring of suspicious messages on social networks; “Now there is a lot of talk about dehydration, heatstroke, delirium due to hyperthermia and heat stroke, and fainting and heart attacks as a result of the heat,” a witness to those meetings told a group of journalists a few days ago.
In recent days, climate experts and specialized research centers that follow the evolution of climate change, have issued warnings regarding France in particular and Western Europe in general, as regions that, since the beginning of the decade, record the most pronounced increase in average temperatures of the five continents.
In this area of the planet, global warming is advancing much faster. Climatologist Matthew Paterson, from the University of Manchester, told the Parisian newspaper this weekend Le Monde that “the warmest summer days in northwest Europe have warmed twice as fast as the planet average.”
The hottest summer days in northwestern Europe have warmed twice as fast as the planet average.
“Northern France (including Paris) and A large area of northwestern Europe is experiencing much higher heat limits than in the past, with between 4° C and 6° C more than in 1950, precisely due to the global warming of the atmosphere that causes more intense, more frequent and longer lasting heat waves, and that appear earlier and continue until much later in the summer,” he explained. Robert Vautard, senior official of the GIEC.
As for 2023, its summer was especially prolific in dog days, in addition to having lasted for almost all of September without temperatures dropping. This rising curve in thermometers, which has been accentuating since the beginning of the decade, raises fears that the summer of 2024 will be especially severe. And for that reason, the alerts are activated from now on.
Thermal stress and mortality, the threats of summer in Europe
The last week of July, Precisely the one in which the Olympics start, last year marked the highest peak of heat in Western Europe, with ceilings well above 40° C, and averages that moved between 35° C and 42° Cwith thermal sensations that, due to the humidity, rose to 48° C.
“If this is repeated at the Olympics, it would not be strange if some tests had to be suspended or moved late into the night,” added the source close to the organization. “A significant number of days with extreme thermal stress, as happened in July and August of last year, will force us to be very vigilant regarding the health risk for athletes and the public.”
If this is repeated in the Olympics, it would not be strange if some tests have to be suspended or moved late into the night.
The journalist Matthieu Goar, from the newspaper Le Monde, one of the most acute analysts of the press on these matters, summarized this Monday the effects of what is happening: “Melting of glaciers, increase in mortality and morbidity during the heat waves, loss of yield of certain agricultural crops”, among other harmful effects.
The French government is becoming more worried every day. For the coming weeks, the release of the third National Plan for Adaptation to climate change is scheduled, and it has been leaked that it will base its calculations on the hypothesis of an increase in temperatures of 4 C in the country by the end of the century, “around to a degree above the world average,” notes Goar.
Rivers, glaciers and the Mediterranean also suffer the impact of climate change
“On average for the European river network, river flows in December were the highest on record, with ‘exceptionally high’ flows in almost a quarter of the river network,” the document adds. “In 2023 – it details – a third of the European river network saw river flows exceed the ‘high’ flood threshold and 16% exceeded the ‘severe’ flood threshold.”
In August 2023 and January 2024, for the first time in statistical history the average ocean surface temperature exceeded 21° C.
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Alpine glaciers saw ice loss accelerate in 2023. A single piece of information is shocking: between 2022 and 2023, the glaciers of the Alps lost about 10 percent of their volume, marking a dramatic acceleration of an ice reduction process that has already been going on for several decades.
The consequences range from the deterioration of corals to the reduction of algae, in addition to the arrival of invasive species from warmer waters, which have unbalanced the biological order.
In August 2023 and January 2024, for the first time in statistical history, the average temperature of the ocean surface exceeded 21° C. And although this has hit the North Atlantic like other waters on the planet, what is really serious For Europe it has occurred in the Mediterranean, where this increase in temperatures is 20% above the level of the rest of the world’s seas.
The consequences range from the deterioration of corals to the reduction of algae, in addition to the arrival of invasive species from warmer waters, which have unbalanced the biological order, with negative effects for many native species and, incidentally, for the fishermen.
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Experts fear that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest
Although May has only been a week and there are six more left until the official start date of summer, June 21, the general feeling is that, as has been happening for some years, the increase in temperatures to summer levels will arrive earlier and will be extend until the end of September. The question is whether, in addition to being longer, the summer will be more intense than last year’s very intense one.
And if the dog days in mid-July and August continue or even increase this year, With the severity of the summer will also come the gigantic forest fires, the drought and the increase in mortality that, in recent years, has placed deaths due to heat in Europe well above 60,000. Quite an agenda to worry about for a continent that already has enough headaches with the weakened economy, the terrorist threat and the war in Ukraine.
MAURICIO VARGAS LINARES – EL TIEMPO ANALYST – [email protected] / Instagram @mvargaslinares
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