Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Severe summer gives a taste of the future

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Rome: Swaths of southern Europe sweltered on Saturday in a heatwave that has claimed several lives, cost billions in crop damage and is, scientists warned, a foretaste of worse to follow in coming decades.


At least five deaths in Italy and Romania have been attributed to the extreme conditions since the heatwave set in around the start of August.


Unusually high, sometimes unprecedented temperatures, are being recorded across an area spanning much of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), southern France, Italy, the Balkans and Hungary.


Thermometer mercury has regularly risen above 40 degrees Celsius across the affected areas, exacerbating the impact of an extended drought and the lingering impact of a July heatwave which sparked wildfires that claimed 60 lives in Portugal.


Hospital admissions have spiked 15-20 per cent in Italy, where at least three people have died.


In Italy, humidity and other factors are making it feel much hotter with the so-called “perceived” temperature in Campania, the region around Naples, estimated at a broiling 55 Celsius on Friday. Hospital admissions are running 15-20 per cent above seasonal norms and food producers are forecast to suffer billions of euros in losses as a result of reduced crop yields.


Italian wine and olive production is tipped to fall 15 and 30 per cent respectively this year.


In Rome, tourists have been risking recently-introduced fines for splashing in the Eternal City’s fountains to cool off. But there has yet to be any sign of visitors to southern Europe’s summer hotspots being deterred by the rising trend in temperatures.


Tourists were queueing once more on Saturday outside Florence’s Uffizi museum, which was forced to close on Friday after its air-conditioning broke down because of a lack of water from the dried up River Arno.


France is still haunted by memories of a 2003 heatwave which resulted in an estimated 15,000 avoidable deaths among pensioners, some of whom had been left on their own by holiday-making relatives.


Scientists meanwhile warned that deaths due to extreme weather in Europe could increase fifty-fold from an estimated 3,000 per year recently to 152,000 by the end of this century — if global warming is not reined in.


Southern Europe will suffer most and heatwaves would account for 99 per cent of the deaths, according to research conducted for the European Commission and published in The Lancet Planetary Health.


The conclusions were questioned by Korean peers of the researchers who suggested humans would become less vulnerable to extreme weather with experience of it.


Meteo France forecaster Frederic Nathan said he was sure recent heatwaves reflected global warning.


“We have always had them but their length and intensity has notched up since the 1950s and 60s and they are increasingly coming earlier or later. — AFP


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