Climate crisis: the UN warns the billionaire cost that will contain more powerful hurricanes

[Inkriql]

Building the necessary protections for the coasts by increasing the level of the seas could significantly reduce the risk of flooding, but it would cost "between tens and hundreds of billions of dollars annually," according to a report by UN climate experts. posted this Wednesday.

The works would reduce the risk of flooding from one in 100 to one in 1,000. However, what works for large coastal cities will be less effective for agricultural deltas or small atolls, scientists warn, considering that island states will not have the means to spend the equivalent of "several" points of their GDP in this type of protection works.

UN experts pointed out that "many" large coastal cities and small islands should suffer extreme weather events by 2050 annually, even if the world reduces its greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that, by then, more than one billion people will live in low-lying coastal areas, particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Some island states run the risk of becoming "uninhabitable."

This is the most extensive report published to date on the impact of the climate crisis on the oceans, and is based on more than 7,000 scientific studies.

The conclusions of the Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change Experts (IPCC) were also severe with respect to sea level rise. The process is inevitable due mainly to the retraction of the ice caps. It remains to be seen how much water will advance along the coasts.

In recent years, the level of the seas rose 2.5 times faster compared to the twentieth century. If greenhouse gas emissions are greatly reduced and climate warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, the rise could be between 30 and 60 centimeters. However, if the current trend in rising temperatures were maintained, it could reach 110 centimeters compared to the level of the late twentieth century.

Stronger Hurricanes

The analysis of that United Nations-dependent panel, presented in Monaco, shows that climate warming has also raised the temperature of the oceans, that they are hotter, more acidic and less productive, and that extreme phenomena such as El Niño are going to be every more frequent and severe.

In this way, cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons will be more potent, even in a world limited to an increase of 2 ° C, and will cause more damage to the coasts. The “average intensity” of tropical cyclones and the proportion of category 4 and 5 cyclones, which would have already grown in recent years, “should increase”, although cyclones, in general terms, would not necessarily occur more frequently.

On the other hand, it is estimated that small glaciers in Europe, East Africa, the Tropical Andes and Indonesia will lose more than 80% of their ice mass by 2100 with the current scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions. With this, water quality and its availability in lower regions are also affected, with implications in sectors such as agriculture, tourism or energy generation.