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Storm Julia kills 25 in Central America as it churns toward Mexico

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(Last Updated On: October 11, 2022)

The death toll from storm Julia rose to at least 25 on Monday, officials said, with most victims in El Salvador and Guatemala, as the weakening storm dumped heavy rain on a swath of Central America and southern Mexico.

Salvadoran authorities reported the deaths of 10 people, including five soldiers, and said more than 1,000 people were evacuated.

In Guatemala, eight were killed between Sunday and Monday, according to officials, while seven were injured and hundreds more affected by the storm.

Authorities in both El Salvador and Guatemala also canceled classes on Monday.

In Honduras, five victims have been confirmed including a woman who died Sunday after she was swept away by flood waters, and a four-year-old boy in a boat that capsized near the Nicaragua border on Saturday night, officials said.

Panama’s emergency services confirmed later on Monday two deaths as a result of heavy rains, with around 300 people evacuated from communities near the country’s border with Costa Rica.

Julia made landfall Sunday on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast before crossing into the Pacific Ocean.

By Monday afternoon, Julia had dissipated and what was left of the storm was moving northwest at 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) over Guatemala near the border with Mexico, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The Miami-based NHC estimated Julia’s maximum sustained winds at about 30 mph (45 km/h).

The NHC warned of life-threatening surf and rip conditions along the coasts of El Salvador and Guatemala, while heavy rain could still cause flash flooding.

It predicted an additional one to four inches of rain in El Salvador and southern Guatemala, and three to six inches on Mexico’s Tehuantepec isthmus.

The storm system is expected to weaken further Monday, the NHC said.

Honduran authorities added that 9,200 people sought refuge in shelters.

In Nicaragua, Julia left a million people without power and heavy rains and floods forced the evacuations of more than 13,000 families.

Climate Change

First major fire of year destroys 3,000 hectares in Spain

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(Last Updated On: March 25, 2023)

Spain’s first major wildfire of the year raged in the eastern Valencia region on Friday, destroying more than 3,000 hectares of forest and forcing 1,500 residents to abandon their homes, authorities said, Reuters reported.

An unusually dry winter across parts of the south of the European continent has reduced moisture in the soil and raised fears of a repeat of 2022, when 785,000 hectares were destroyed in Europe – more than double the annual average for the past 16 years, according to European Commission (EC) statistics.

“These fires we’re seeing, especially this early in the year, are once again proof of the climate emergency that humanity is living through, which particularly affects and ravages countries such as ours,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a news conference in Brussels.

In Spain, 493 fires destroyed a record 307,000 hectares of land last year, according to the Commission’s European Forest Fire Information System.

More than 500 firefighters supported by 18 planes and helicopters worked throughout the night and on Friday to tackle the blaze near the village of Villanueva de Viver, in the Valencia region.

Emergency services evacuated eight communities, said Gabriela Bravo, the regional head of interior affairs.

“We didn’t sleep well because of anxiety, wondering whether our home had burned down and thinking about the animals we have,” said Maria Antonia Montalaz, who was evacuated from nearby Montanejos.

While firefighters believed they were managing to control the spread of the flames, strong winds and “practically summertime temperatures” could reactivate it, Bravo said.

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Climate Change

World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning

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(Last Updated On: March 22, 2023)

Humanity still has a chance, close to the last, to prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday.

But doing so requires quickly slashing nearly two-thirds of carbon pollution by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040.

“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Stepping up his pleas for action on fossil fuels, Guterres called for rich countries to accelerate their target for achieving net zero emissions to as early as 2040, and developing nations to aim for 2050 — about a decade earlier than most current targets. He also called for them to stop using coal by 2030 and 2040, respectively, and ensure carbon-free electricity generation in the developed world by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants either.

That date is key because nations soon have to come up with goals for pollution reduction by 2035, according to the Paris climate agreement. After contentious debate, the U.N. science report approved Sunday concluded that to stay under the warming limit set in Paris the world needs to cut 60% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, compared with 2019, adding a new target not previously mentioned in six previous reports issued since 2018.

“The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts for thousands of years,” the report said, calling climate change “a threat to human well-being and planetary health.”

“We are not on the right track but it’s not too late,” said report co-author and water scientist Aditi Mukherji. “Our intention is really a message of hope, and not that of doomsday.’’

With the world only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, scientists stressed a sense of urgency. The goal was adopted as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.

This is likely the last warning the Nobel Peace Prize-winning collection of scientists will be able to make about the 1.5 mark because their next set of reports may well come after Earth has either passed the mark or is locked into exceeding it soon, several scientists, including report authors, told The Associated Press.

After 1.5 degrees “the risks are starting to pile on,” said report co-author Francis X. Johnson, a climate, land and policy scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. The report mentions “tipping points” around that temperature of species extinction, including coral reefs, irreversible melting of ice sheets and sea level rise of several meters.

“1.5 is a critical critical limit, particularly for small islands and mountain (communities) which depend on glaciers,” said Mukherji.

“The window is closing if emissions are not reduced as quickly as possible,” Johnson said in an interview. “Scientists are rather alarmed.”

Many scientists, including at least three co-authors, said hitting 1.5 degrees is inevitable.

“We are pretty much locked into 1.5,” said report co-author Malte Meinshausen, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “There’s very little way we will be able to avoid crossing 1.5 C sometime in the 2030s ” but the big issue is whether the temperature keeps rising from there or stabilizes.

Guterres insisted “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.” Science panel chief Hoesung Lee said so far the world is far off course.

If current consumption and production patterns continue, Lee said, “the global average 1.5 degrees temperature increase will be seen sometime in this decade.”

Scientists emphasize that the world or humanity won’t end suddenly if Earth passes the 1.5 degree mark. Mukherji said “it’s not as if it’s a cliff that we all fall off.” But an earlier IPCC report detailed how the harms — including even nastier extreme weather — are much worse beyond 1.5 degrees of warming.

“It is certainly prudent to be planning for a future that’s warmer than 1.5 degrees,” said IPCC report review editor Steven Rose, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute in the United States.

If the world continues to use all the fossil fuel-powered infrastructure either existing now or proposed, Earth will warm at least 2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, the report said.

Because the report is based on data from a few years ago, the calculations about fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline do not include the increase in coal and natural gas use after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It comes a week after the Biden Administration in the United States approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day.

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Climate Change

UN science report to provide stark climate warning

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(Last Updated On: March 20, 2023)

A major new United Nations report being released Monday is expected to provide a sobering reminder that time is running out if humanity wants to avoid passing a dangerous global warming threshold.

The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists is the capstone on a series that summarizes the research on global warming compiled since the Paris climate accord was agreed in 2015, Associated Press reported.

It was approved by countries at the end of a week-long meeting of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in the Swiss town of Interlaken, meaning governments have accepted its findings as authoritative advice on which to base their actions.

At the start of the meeting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned delegates that the planet is “nearing the point of no return” and they risk missing the internationally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming since pre-industrial times.

That’s because global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses keep increasing — mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and intensive agriculture — when in fact they need to decline quickly.

The new synthesis report published Monday will play a pivotal role when governments gather in Dubai in December for this year’s U.N. climate talks. The meeting will be the first to take stock of global efforts to cut emissions since the Paris deal, and hear calls from poorer nations seeking more aid.

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