Extreme weather in Latin America opens vicious cycle – 7/5/2023 – Environment

Extreme weather is wreaking havoc across Latin America, racking up billions in damage and triggering a vicious cycle that leads to greater demand for fossil fuels and more climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday. , which is part of the UN.

Temperatures have risen by an average of 0.2°C per decade over the past 30 years — the highest rate on record, according to the State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2022 report.

As temperatures rise, extreme weather events become more common, with often unexpected consequences that exacerbate climate change, the report said.

“The prolonged drought led to a drop in hydroelectric generation in much of South America, causing an increase in demand for fossil fuels in a region with great potential for renewable energies”, explains the report.

Wildfires across Latin America in 2022, fueled by dry soils and extreme heat, sent carbon dioxide emissions to a 20-year high, raising temperatures and intensifying disaster risk, the report noted.

“Many of the extreme events were influenced by long-term La Niña, but also bore the imprint of human-induced climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“The newcomer El Niño will turn up the heat and bring more extreme weather.”

Drought and storms accounted for most of the $9 billion in economic damage reported in 2022 to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) at the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

The World Meteorological Organization’s report comes amid the Convention on Environment and Development held in Havana and organized by the G77 group of developing countries, which includes China.

The document was also released as the world records two consecutive records in global average heat.

This Tuesday (4), an average of 17.18°C was recorded on the planet, a new record. On Monday (3), the average global temperature had reached 17.01°C, surpassing the highest index recorded by scientists so far, of 16.92°C, in 2016, and which was repeated in 2022.

Cuba’s Minister of the Environment, Elba Rosa Perez, said during the inaugural session of the convention, this Tuesday (4), that the situation has pushed many developing countries to the limit.

“We are facing increasingly strong impacts of climate change, but the decisions adopted in the climate negotiations for the implementation of the Paris Agreement do not advance at the same pace”, she said.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a target of keeping warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but scientists and activists warn that more action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.