LONDON: The summer of 2021 was the hottest one Europe has experienced since records began, EU scientists said on Friday.
The temperature was 1 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said in its annual report, which also focused attention on the wildfires that wracked Greece, Turkey and Italy, and the devastating floods seen in Western Europe.
The agency's records go back to 1979, but it also uses records from ground stations, balloons, aircraft and satellites going back to1950.
The climate researchers took a closer look at the flood disaster in mid-July 2021 in the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine Westphalia, which claimed the lives of more than 180 people.
Record rainfall was recorded on July 14, 2021 over Belgium and western Germany.
The disaster was able to develop in such a way because an unusually large amount of rain had already fallen in the previous weeks and the soil was therefore no longer able to absorb sufficient water, the report said.
The report's lead author, Freja Vamborg, said more such disasters are likely as the Earth continues to heat up.
The Mediterranean region experienced an intense and prolonged heatwave in July and August, while temperature records were broken in Italy and Spain.
US INITIATIVE
US President Joe Biden, marking Earth Day on Friday, ordered protection of the United States' ancient forests, seen as a crucial weapon in the fight against climate change, during a trip to Seattle.
The Democrat has campaigned heavily for environmental protections and US leadership in the response to global warming, but has regularly run up against lack of support in Congress.
His executive order, signed in the heavily wooded and often spectacularly wild Washington state, will recognise the importance of America's old-growth forests in regulating climate change -- but also their vulnerability in an era of ever more intense wildfires.
In the order, Biden requires officials overseeing federal lands to inventory mature forests within a year and to identify threats to the trees.
"America's forests are a key climate solution, absorbing carbon dioxide equivalent to more than 10 per cent of US annual greenhouse gas emissions," the White House said in a statement.
"Federal lands are home to many of the nation's mature and old-growth forests, which serve as critical carbon sinks, cherished landscapes, and unique habitats.
"However, these magnificent ecosystems are threatened by the climate impacts that are already here, with intensifying wildfires demanding urgent action to protect our forests and the economies that depend on them." - dpa/AFP
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