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| Snow covered fields near Warngau, southern Germany, April 27, 2017. Michael Dalder |
LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's death toll from weather
disasters could rise 50-fold by the end of this century, with extreme
heat alone killing more than 150,000 people a year by 2100 if nothing is
done to curb the effects of climate change, scientists said on Friday.
In
a study in The Lancet Planetary Health journal, the scientists said
their findings showed climate change placing a rapidly increasing burden
on society, with two in three people in Europe likely to be affected if
greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather events are not controlled.
The predictions, based on an assumption of no
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and no improvement in policies to
reduce the impact of extreme climatic events, show European
weather-related deaths rising from 3,000 a year between 1981 and 2010 to
152,000 a year between 2071 and 2100.
"Climate
change is one of the biggest global threats to human health of the 21st
century, and its peril to society will be increasingly connected to
weather-driven hazards," said Giovanni Forzieri of the European
Commission Joint Research Centre in Italy, who co-led the study.
He
said that "unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency",
some 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful climate extremes
on an annual basis by the end of the century.
The
study analysed the effects of the seven most harmful types of
weather-related disaster – heat waves, cold waves, wildfires, droughts,
river and coastal floods and windstorms – in the 28 countries of the
European Union, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
The
team looked at disaster records from 1981 to 2010 to estimate
population vulnerability, then combined this with modelling of how
climate change might progress and how populations might increase and
migrate.
Their findings suggested heat waves
would be the most lethal weather-related disaster and could cause 99
percent of all future weather-related deaths in Europe – rising from
2,700 deaths a year between 1981 and 2010 to 151,500 deaths a year in
2071 to 2100.
The results also predicted a
substantial rise in deaths from coastal flooding, from six deaths a year
at the start of the century to 233 a year by the end of it.
The
researchers said climate change would be the main driver, accounting
for 90 percent of the risk, while population growth, migration and
urbanisation would account for 10 percent.
Paul
Wilkinson, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine who was not involved in the research, said its findings were
worrying.
"Global warming could result in
rapidly rising human impacts unless adequate adaptation measures are
taken, with an especially steep rise in the mortality risks of extreme
heat," he said.
The findings add "further weight to the powerful
argument for accelerating mitigation actions" to limit emissions, slow
climate change and protect population health, Wilkinson said.Links
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