London, Thanasis Gavos

Increasingly frequent and intense wildfires, like those in Rhodes, are being fueled by heat, which would be “almost impossible” to happen without human-caused climate change, says environmental group WWA (World Weather Performance).

The organization’s British and Dutch scientists attribute climate change to extreme weather events and their consequences, such as record temperatures in China and record-breaking heatwaves in Arizona.

As they also warn, heat waves of this kind will become more intense and more frequent if the use of fossil fuels that cause the emission of dangerous pollutants is not stopped.

The report says heat waves like the current one should now be expected once every 15 years in North America, once every ten years in Europe and once every five years in China.

Without climate change, similar phenomena in China would occur once every 250 years.

Specifically, climate change is responsible for 2.5 degrees Celsius of increased heat in Europe, two degrees in North America and one degree in China.

WWA’s scientific assessment of Europe is that it is warming faster than the global average rate because it lies between the increasingly warm regions of the Arctic and the Sahara desert.

“The world has not stopped burning fossil fuels, the climate continues to warm and heat waves continue to become more extreme. It’s that simple,” added Dr Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, who co-authored the report.

He added that if the way we use energy doesn’t change, then “tens of thousands of people will continue to die every year from heat-related causes.”

Environmental analysts in Britain note that what the planet is experiencing is the result of warming by 1 degree Celsius. Within the next 30 years, the degree of warming will have reached 2 degrees Celsius if there is no drastic reduction in pollutant emissions to zero in the coming decades.

WWA co-author of the report Julie Arrighi, director at the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre, warned that extreme heat is increasing and it is therefore critical to renew government and scientific warning systems, review action plans and invest in long-term adaptation measures, including in critical infrastructure such as hospitals, power plants, the grid water supply and transport.

“We need a cultural shift in the way we think about extreme heat,” he commented.

Commenting on the report, the head of the Energy and Climate Information Unit’s international program, Gareth Redmond-King, said the climate impacts of warming will not stop without zero emissions.

As he added, it is necessary to immediately impose measures by governments in favor of, among other things, the use of electric vehicles and heat pumps, with solar and wind energy production.

Also, the former chief scientific adviser to the British government, Sir David King, said that “it is no coincidence that climate change is causing these higher temperatures and higher temperatures are causing the fires that are spreading”.

Similarly, Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts and Research at the UK Met Office, commented that it doesn’t matter how fires start, whether by accident or on purpose, but that climate change has made them more likely and more intense.

“The fact is that when the fire breaks out, it will be more intense when the weather is warmer and drier. And human-caused climate change has made the weather warmer and drier in this part of the world,” said the British professor.