Heat waves should be considered natural disaster: Turkish climatologist

Heat waves should be considered natural disaster: Turkish climatologist

With persistent warmth waves changing into extra widespread throughout the Northern Hemisphere, triggering unprecedented forest fires and adverse results on folks’s well being, a Turkish climatologist asserted Friday that they need to be thought-about pure disasters, identical to floods.

Professor Levent Kurnaz, director of Boğaziçi University’s Center for Climate Change and Policy Studies, talking to native media, known as for pressing motion, emphasizing that the local weather fingerprints pushed by coal and petroleum emissions would result in the continuation of the warming.

“These are still relatively better times, and authorities need to urgently acknowledge heat waves as disasters,” he stated, stressing that the following 20 years are sure to be even worse.

From the start of the month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued a number of warnings about excessive warmth waves, significantly within the Northern Hemisphere and worldwide.

July has been so sizzling up to now that scientists calculate that this month would be the hottest globally on document and sure the warmest human civilization has seen, despite the fact that there are a number of days left to sweat by means of.

The WMO and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July’s warmth is past record-smashing. They stated Earth’s temperature has been quickly passing over a key warming threshold: The internationally accepted objective of limiting world warming to 1.5 levels Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit).

As a brand new warmth wave threatens to impression Türkiye once more, Kurnaz listed the measures wanted to forestall additional temperature will increase to deal with the local weather disaster.

He additionally recalled that Istanbul has recorded the very best temperatures in 23 years, with 44.1 levels Celsius on July 26, noting that this determine may probably contact even 45 subsequent summer time.

“We also experience cold waves from the Balkans, not only in January but also in July. Cold waves from the Balkans occur every season. A temperature drop of 10 degrees from one day to the next is not something we haven’t seen or heard before. We are not so surprised when it happens at other times, but when temperatures suddenly drop from 40 to 20 degrees, we wonder what is happening,” Kurnaz famous.

Elaborating on the latest warmth wave skilled throughout the nation prior to now couple of days, Kurnaz stated that prime temperatures do point out a local weather disaster. Yet, he famous the state of affairs is a bit milder in Türkiye, the place having solely in the future of utmost warmth is just not too dangerous when in comparison with, for instance, some components of America the place it lasts for 5 days, 20 days, one month, and even one and a half months.

“Compared to them, our heat wave came and went in a day or two. That’s why we are grateful for the cold waves coming from the Balkans,” he stated.

Reiterating that the warming of the environment results in a rise in temperatures, he stated that in response to the legal guidelines of the Republic of Türkiye, excessive temperatures are usually not thought-about a catastrophe. He advised issuing such legal guidelines and pledged to concern of warnings in circumstances when excessive temperatures last more.

“There is no chance of going back to being better in any way. But we can prevent it from getting worse. We need to stop burning coal, petroleum and natural gas. Around 65% of this problem comes from burning coal, petroleum and natural gas,” he stated, urging to shift on the manufacturing of vitality from renewable sources.

Considering the latest record-breaking temperatures, he reiterated that the planet’s well-being is determined by quick efforts to mitigate world warming.

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