EUROPE-HEAT WAVE

Context

Key points

• Devastation due to extreme weather has been particularly acute in western Europe.
• It has been hit by raging wildfires, drought and hundreds of heat-related deaths, ringing alarm bells about a looming climate emergency.
• Wildfires and dry weather destroyed 19,000 hectares of forest in southwestern France.
• Italy has been reeling under drought, with the Po river basin, one of Europe's food bowls not having rains in more than 200 days.
• Across the Atlantic, the temperatures touch 43°C in some regions.
• Around 69 million Americans were reported to be at risk of exposure to dangerous levels of heat and heat-related illnesses.

Reasons 

• The heat waves are a result of climate change caused by human activity.
• Global temperatures have already risen by more than 1°C and rise the probability of the country witnessing 40°C by ten times.
• This year it led to deviations above the normal by 15 degrees in Antarctica and by more than 3 degrees in the north pole, which have also induced changes in old wind patterns.
• These changes turned western Europe into what has been described as a "heat dome" a low-pressure area that began to attract hot air from northern Africa.
• In the case of the U.S., the record temperatures are being linked to changes in the jet stream a narrow band of westerly air currents that circulate several kilometres above the earth's surface.
• A conventionally strong jet stream has weakened and split into two leading to intense and more frequent heat waves over parts of the American continent.

Impact on Long-run

• In Europe, the heat wave has renewed calls for determined action on climate mitigation measures.
• In the U.S., The Political leadership, especially in Republican states many of which, like Texas also happen to have extreme weather hot spots are still reluctant to recognise climate change as the cause of the problem.
• People pray rather than acknowledge the role of a fossil-fuels in trigging extreme weather.
• Amid rising fuel costs caused by a ban on Russian gas. In Germany, politicians are speaking of replacing Russian gas with domestic coal.
• The progressive depletion of water tables and increasingly drier soil and shallower rivers.
• The reduction in soil moisture has made forest fires more probable, dying rivers are critical for both agriculture and hydropower and have affected harvests and energy security.

Conclusion 

• Both Europe and the U.S., remain firmly bonded to fossil-fuel consumption.
• Europe has been more vocal about cutting down emissions and has sought to invest heavily in renewables but was disrupted by the Ukraine war and an impending energy crisis sparked by the self-imposed withdrawal from cheap Russian Gas.
• The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that the kind of heatwaves being seen in Europe right now would very soon become the new normal.