Absolutamente assustador e com perspectivas futuras ainda mais assustadoras na perspectiva das migrações errantes causadas por temperaturas futuras, que vão tornar a vida insustentável no Médio Oriente. As temeperaturas indicadas são em graus Fahrenheit.
OVOODOCORVO
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Global
warming has brought a hellish heatwave to the Middle East – and
it's coming to the rest of the world
The
severe weather shows what's coming – and it's going to be far, far
worse
Hugh Naylor
Record-shattering
temperatures this summer havescorched countries from Morocco to Saudi
Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather
could be a harbinger of worse to come.
In coming decades,
U.N. officials and climate scientists predict that the region’s
mushrooming populations will face extreme water scarcity,
temperatures almost too hot for human survival and other consequences
of global warming.
If that happens,
conflicts and refugee crises far greater than those now underway are
probable, said Adel Abdellatif, a senior adviser at the U.N.
Development Program’s Regional Bureau for Arab States who has
worked on studies about the effect of climate change on the region.
Climate change
protests around the world
“This incredible
weather shows that climate change is already taking a toll now and
that it is — by far — one of the biggest challenges ever faced by
this region,” he said.
These countries have
grappled with remarkably warm summers in recent years, but this year
has been particularly brutal.
Parts of the United
Arab Emirates and Iran experienced a heat index — a measurement
that factors in humidity as well as temperature — that soared to
140 degrees in July, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, recorded an all-time
high temperature of nearly 126 degrees. Southern Morocco’s
relatively cooler climate suddenly sizzled last month, with
temperatures surging to highs between 109 and 116 degrees. In May,
record-breaking temperatures in Israel led to a surge in
heat-related illnesses.
Temperatures in
Kuwait and Iraq startled observers. On July 22, the mercury climbed
to 129 degrees in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A day earlier, it
reached 129.2 in Mitribah, Kuwait. If confirmed by the World
Meteorological Organization, the two temperatures would be the
hottest ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere.
The bad news isn’t
over, either. Iraq’s heat wave is expected to continue this week.
Stepping outside is
like “walking into a fire,” said Zainab Guman, a 26-year-old
university student who lives in Basra. “It’s like everything on
your body — your skin, your eyes, your nose — starts to burn,”
she said.
Guman has rarely
left home during daylight hours since June, when temperatures started
rising above 120 degrees and metal objects outside turned into
searing-hot hazards.
Read more
Kuwait swelters in
what could be highest temperature ever recorded
About that time,
Aymen Karim also began feeling trapped.
The 28-year-old
engineer at a government-run oil company in Basra said employees were
ordered to stay home for several days in the past month. He and his
family try not to go outside before 7 p.m.
“We’re
prisoners,” Karim said.
Bassem Antoine, an
Iraqi economist, said the weather has inflicted serious damage to the
country’s economy. He estimates that Iraq’s gross domestic
product — about $230 billion annually — has probably contracted
10 to 20 percent during the summer heat.
Iraqi officials say
scores of farmers across the country have been struggling with
wilting crops, and general workforce productivity has decreased.
Hospitals,
meanwhile, have seen an uptick in the number of people suffering from
dehydration and heat exhaustion.
Tens of thousands of
Iraqis displaced by battles between government forces and Islamic
State militants have endured the heat in tents and other makeshift
shelters. Humanitarian organizations have been unable to reach all of
them because of budget constraints, restrictions by Iraq’s
government and risks associated with operating in war zones.
“A lot of these
people are probably dying, but it’s hard to know,” said an
official at an aid organization who was not authorized to discuss the
issue publicly and so spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In Baghdad, the
capital, the temperature measured at the international airport has
reached 109 degrees or higher nearly every day since June 19. The
city has been 10 and even 20 degrees warmer than normal for this time
of year.
The government has
declared multiple mandatory official holidays because of the heat.
When that happens, many public employees turn up to work anyway
because of the air conditioning available at government offices.
Most Iraqi homes and
businesses suffer daily power cuts for 12 hours or more, and most
Iraqis — unlike their rich neighbors in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia —
are too poor to afford 24-hour air conditioning anyway. Such a luxury
requires paying expensive fees for gas-powered generators.
During daylight
hours, Baghdad’s streets are empty, but some businesses remain
open. It’s either sweat at work or starve at home, said Eissa
Mohsen, who owns a fruit stand in the Karrada area of downtown
Baghdad.
“Look over there!
That’s an air-conditioning unit, but I can’t afford to pay the
generator fees to run it,” he said at his shop on a recent day.
The immediate cause
of all this misery is a stubborn high-pressure system, but a
fundamental shift in the country’s weather patterns appears to be
taking place, said Mahmoud Abdul-Latif, spokesman for Iraq’s
meteorological department. In Baghdad, he said, the number of days
with temperatures at 118 degrees or higher has more than doubled in
recent years.
“If you look back
40 years ago, you’d have these temperatures for four or five days,
but then the wind would kick up dust and that would cool the surface.
That’s just not happening now,” he said.
Read more
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mankind will miss crucial climate change target – eight months
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existential threat urge UK to ratify Paris climate change agreement
Climate
scientists expected 'nothing like' this year's record-breaking global
temperatures
Climate scientists
say this shouldn’t be surprising.
A study published by
the journal Nature Climate Change in October predicted that heat
waves in parts of the Persian Gulf could threaten human survival
toward the end of the century. Researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia recently
predicted a similarly grim fatefor the Middle East and North Africa,
a vast area currently home to about a half-billion people.
The region’s
governments are generally not prepared to deal with rapidly growing
populations and climactic shifts, said Francesca de Châtel, an
Amsterdam-based expert on Middle Eastern water issues. For years, she
said, they have failed to address these problems adequately despite
warnings from climate experts and U.N. agencies, and it may be too
late now.
The United Nations
predicts that the combined population of 22 Arab countries will grow
from about 400 million to nearly 600 million by 2050. That would
place tremendous stress on countries where climate scientists predict
significantly lower rainfall and saltier groundwater from rising sea
levels. Already, most countries in the region face acute water crises
because of dry climates, surging consumption and wasteful
agricultural practices.
Analysts point to
inadequate government handling of an unprecedented drought in Syria
as a trigger for the country’s devastating civil war, which has
produced extraordinary refugee flows that have spilled into Europe.
Last year, Iraqis
rallied in Baghdad against their government’s inability to provide
enough electricity during another scorching summer heat wave. Little,
if anything, resulted from those demonstrations. According to some
estimates, Iraq’s population of about 33 million people will nearly
double by 2050.
“The countries in
the region are not prepared to cope with the effects of climate
change,” said de Châtel.
Such a blistering
future doesn’t seem like a far-off possibility to 33-year-old Arkan
Farhan, who lives with his family near Baghdad in a tin hut at camp
for people displaced by the Islamic State.
Last month, he said,
he contracted typhoid from a communal water source that has become
particularly crowded — and filthy — this summer. To cool off, his
sons use it to fill a pan for bathing.
This month, his
69-year-old father, Jassam, was taken to the hospital after passing
out from the heat.
“Fortunately, he
was only bruised. He didn’t break any bones,” Farhan said of his
father while sitting in his sweltering shack. “Iraqis are strong
people. But this heat is like a fire. Can people live in fire?”
Mustafa Salim in
Baghdad and Sheikha al-Dosary in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed
this report
Copyright:
Washington Post
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