by Tim Hepher
PARIS (Reuters) – The economic damage from heatwaves and drought could outweigh the impact of Europe’s energy crisis, the director of the European Space Agency (ESA) has warned, calling urgent action to combat climate change.
Successive heat waves, forest fires, shrinking rivers and rising land temperatures measured from space leave no doubt about the consequences of climate change on agriculture and other sectors, has Josef Aschbacher told Reuters.
“Today we are very concerned about the energy crisis, and rightly so. But this crisis is very small compared to the impact of climate change, which is of a much greater magnitude and really needs to be tackled extremely quickly. “, he added.
Increasing heat waves and flooding are raising concerns about extreme weather conditions around the world.
More than 57,200 hectares have been ravaged by forest fires in France this year, nearly six times the annual average.
Spain experienced July its hottest month since at least 1961, due to the long dry spell.
The Great Salt Lake of Utah, in the United States, and the Po, in Italy, are at their lowest levels on record. In France, the Loire is now under surveillance and in Germany, the low water level of the Rhine threatens economic growth.
On Tuesday, Britain also issued a new orange warning for “extreme heat” after record temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius.
“The situation is quite serious. We have seen extremes that have never been seen before,” the ESA director told Reuters this week.
Rising temperatures are also affecting the earth’s surface: ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites have measured “extreme” temperatures on the surface of the ground in recent weeks, above 45°C in Great Britain, 50°C in France and 60°C in Spain, said Josef Aschbacher.
“It’s really the whole ecosystem that’s changing very, very fast and much faster than what scientists predicted until a few years ago,” he said.
“It’s the droughts, the fires, the intensity of the storms, all of that coupled together, that are the visible signs of climate change.”
The winds, with higher temperatures, are getting stronger and “the typhoons are much more powerful than before in terms of wind speed and therefore damage”.
LACK OF FUNDING
Josef Aschbacher was appointed head of the Paris-based ESA last year, after leading Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme.
The program’s six families of Sentinel satellites are responsible for reading the planet’s “vital signs”, evaluating carbon dioxide, wave heights and land and ocean temperatures.
But Copernicus faces a Brexit-related funding shortfall: €750 million needed to help develop a second generation of satellites, which Britain should have provided through the European Union, is currently under discussion.
In particular, ESA is due to discuss in November a funding package for Earth observation worth an estimated 3 billion euros.
Faced with critics of the fight against climate change, Josef Aschbacher rejects what he calls two myths.
“The first is that people think that we can wait and that by waiting, we will get out of it”.
“The second is that tackling climate change will cost a lot of money… and will affect the poorest people, and we shouldn’t be doing it.”
Ignoring warnings such as this year’s weather crisis could cost hundreds of trillions of dollars over the century, he estimates.
“Of course, there have always been fluctuations in the weather… but never of this magnitude. There is no doubt in my mind that this is due to climate change.”
(Reporting Tim Hepher, with the contribution of Joey Roulette; French version Kate Entringer)