The Guardian - John Vidal
Global warming will not affect everyone equally. Here we look at seven
key regions to see how each is tackling the consequences of climate
change
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Mapping the world’s climate hot spots and identifying where the impacts
will be the greatest is increasingly important for governments and those
who need to prioritise resources.
Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters
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It
could have been the edge of the Sahara or even Death Valley, but it was
the remains of a large orchard in the hills above the city of
Murcia
in southern Spain last year. The soil had broken down into fine white,
lifeless sand, and a landscape of rock and dying orange and lemon trees
stretched into the distance.
A long drought, the second in a few years, had devastated the harvest after city authorities had
restricted water supplies
and farmers were protesting in the street. It was a foretaste of what
may happen if temperatures in the Mediterranean basin continue to rise
and desertification grows.
All round the world, farmers, city authorities and scientists have
observed changing patterns of rainfall, temperature rises and floods.
Fifteen of the 16 hottest years have been recorded since 2000. Carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions steadily climb. Oceans are
warming and glaciers, ice caps and sea ice are melting faster than
expected. Meanwhile, heat and rainfall records tumble.
The evidence for the onset of climate change is compelling. But who
and where is it hitting the hardest? How fast will it come to
Africa,
or the US? What will be its impact on tropical cities, forests or
farming? On the poor, or the old? When it comes to details, much is
uncertain.
Mapping the world’s climate hotspots and identifying where the
impacts will be the greatest is increasingly important for governments,
advocacy groups and others who need to prioritise resources, set goals
and adapt to a warming world.
But lack of data and different priorities make it hard. Should
scientists pinpoint the places most likely to see faster than average
warming or wetter winters, or should they combine expected physical
changes with countries’ vulnerability? Some hot-spot models use
population data. Others seek to portray the impacts of a warming world
on water resources or megacities. Global bodies want to know how climate
might exacerbate natural hazards like floods and droughts. Economists
want to know its impacts on resources. Charities want to know how it
will affect women or the poorest.
What follows is a subjective appraisal of the seven most important
climate hotspots, based on analysis of numerous scientific models and
personal experience of observing climate change in a variety of places.
Delta regions, semi-arid countries, and glacier- and snowpack-dependent
river basins are all in the frontline. But so, too, are tropical coastal
regions and some of the world’s greatest forests and cities.
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| An abandoned orchard in Murcia. If warming is allowed to rise to 2C, much of southern
Spain could become desert, say scientists. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Alamy |
Murcia, Spain
For
Wolfgang Cramer, scientific director of the Mediterranean Institute for
Biodiversity and Ecology in Aix-en-Provence, France, climate change
impacts are already visible not only in the vicinity of Murcia, but
across much of the Mediterranean basin. If pledges to cut emissions are
not met, catastrophe looms.
He and his colleague Joel Guiot, a paleoclimatologist, last year
studied pollen locked in layers of sediment
over the past 10,000 years and compared them with projections about
climate and vegetation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change.
If warming is allowed to rise to 2C, the scientists concluded, much of southern
Spain
and the Mediterranean basin could become desert. Their paper, published
in Science, was shocking because it showed that even a small
temperature increase could be enough to create ecological havoc in a
very heavily populated region with relatively wealthy countries.
They warned that North African countries would see increased
temperatures and drought that would drive the southern deserts further
north; that deserts would expand in the Middle East, pushing temperate
forests higher into the mountains; and that ecosystems not seen in the
Mediterranean basin in more than 10,000 years could develop.
“We are more certain of the drying trend in the region than almost
anywhere else on the planet. Temperatures have risen 1C globally but
1.4C in the Mediterranean region. The trend is for it to become ever
warmer,” says Cramer.
Increasing temperature, he says, drives droughts. “More carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere means rising temperatures, less precipitation
and then more drying that leads to desertification.”
Meanwhile, water stress, heat waves and an extended drought linked to
climate change in the eastern Mediterranean has been widely implicated
in the long Syrian war and an underlying driver of conflict in Middle
East and North African countries.
The World Resources Institute concurred in 2015 that the
Mediterranean basin was a climate hotspot when it placed 14 of the
world’s 33 most
water-stressed countries in 2040 in the Middle East and North Africa region.
“Drought and water shortages in Syria likely contributed to the unrest
that stoked the country’s 2011 civil war. Dwindling water resources and
chronic mismanagement forced 1.5 million people, primarily farmers and
herders, to lose their livelihoods and leave their land, move to urban
areas, and magnify Syria’s general destabilisation,” it said.
The fast-growing, heavily populated region is climatically
vulnerable, it concluded. The food supplies and the social balance of
places like Palestine,
Israel,
Algeria, Lebanon and Jordan are all highly sensitive to even a small
change in water supplies. As climate change intensifies, communities
face grave threats from both droughts and floods.
The combined impact of many more people, higher temperatures and
changing weather patterns on the region’s already scarce freshwater
resources poses further potential for conflict. But optimists hope it
could force compromise between competing states and water users. Rural
areas already have no option but to switch to more efficient irrigation
systems and drought tolerant crops, and urban areas are learning to
conserve water.
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| People gather to receive aid at Guthail, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Many
climate refugees have been forced to leave their homes for the capital,
Dhaka. Photograph: Anik Rahman/NurPhoto/Getty Images |
Dhaka, Bangladesh
I met Honufa soon after she arrived in Dhaka 10 years ago. Erosion
and saltwater intrusion on her family’s land on one of the low-lying
islands in the mouth of the Ganges River had forced the young
Bangladeshi woman to leave her village for the capital. She had taken a
boat and then an overnight bus and ended up in a slum called Beribadh.
Honufa is a climate refugee, one of thousands who have struggled to
grow their crops. Millions are likely to follow her if current trends
continue.
“In the next 20 years we would expect five to 10 million people to
have to move from the coastal areas,” says Saleemul Huq, director of the
Bangladesh-based
International Centre for Climate Change and Development.
“The whole country is a climate hotspot, but the most vulnerable area
is the coast. Dhaka is the place where people head to,” he says.
Huq, who has advised the Bangladesh government at successive UN
climate summits, says there is strong evidence that climate change is
now impacting Dhaka. “Temperatures have already gone up by 1C. We can
see that the weather patterns have changed. Ask anyone in the street,
and they will say the frequency of floods has changed. Bangladesh has a
long history of floods, but what used to be a one-in-20-year event now
happens one year in five. It is what we would expect with climate change
models.”
Huq and other Bangladeshi climate scientists expect to see more
extremes. “Changing rain patterns suggest we will not get more rain over
the coming years but it will be distributed differently, with less in
the dry season and more during the monsoons. Paradoxically, this will
lead to more floods and droughts, and heavier monsoons,” he says.
“We are beginning to see sea levels rising and increased salinity in
coastal areas. It is a slow onset, which will get worse. It is a climate
change phenomenon and not something we had before.”
Huq leads research into how Bangladesh can adapt to climate change.
“We’ve done a lot of research looking at the most vulnerable hotspots.
We are learning by doing,” he says. “Government has now invested in a
major climate change action plan. To counter coastal salinity there is a
big program of rainwater harvesting and coastal protection. Scientists
are developing saline-tolerant rice. People and government are
proactive.
“The trouble is that we are always catching up with the problem.
There is a limit to what we can grow. At some point we will run out of
options, then people will have to move. We know that if we don’t take
action people will all end up in Dhaka, so [we] need to invest in other
towns and cities.”
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| Sunflowers in southern Malawi during the drought and food crisis of 2016
when temperatures rose to 46C. Photograph: Guido Dingemans/Alamy
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Mphampha, Malawi
Late last year, the temperature in southern Malawi in southern Africa
rose to more than 46C. A long regional drought crossing Zimbabwe,
Zambia, Madagascar and Tanzania had scorched and killed the staple maize
crop and
millions of people who had not seen rain for more than a year depended on food aid.
Long-term climate data in southern Africa is sparse, but studies
backed by oral evidence from villagers confirm the region is a climate
hotspot where
droughts are becoming more frequent, rains less regular, food supplies less certain, and the dry spells and floods are lasting longer.
With more than 90% of Malawi and the region depending on rain-fed
agriculture, it does not need scientists to tell people that the climate
is changing. I sat down with villagers near Nsanje in the south of
Malawi.
“I know what it is to go hungry,” says Elvas Munthali, a Malawian aid
worker. “My family depended on farming. The climate is changing. Now we
plant maize at the end of December or even January; we used to do that
in November.”
Patrick Kamzitu, a health worker in Nambuma, says: “It is much warmer
now. The rains come and we plant but then there is a dry spell. The dry
spells and the rains are heavier but shorter.”
One of best studies comes from the Chiwawa district near Nsanje, close to the Mozambique border.
Detailed research
by the University of Malawi, backed by 50 years of rainfall and
temperature data, established that rains, floods, strong winds, high
temperatures and droughts were all becoming more common.
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| An emaciated dog watches a child eat in a village in Chikwawa, one of the areas most affected by drought in Malawi. Photograph: Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images |
The story is more or less repeated across southern Africa and backed
by governments and scientific modeling. USAid, the African Development
Bank, the World Bank and IPCC assessments suggest
average annual temperatures rose nearly 1C between 1960 and 2006.
Looking ahead, scientists expect average annual temperatures across
southern Africa to soar, possibly as much as 3C by the 2060s, to 5C by
the 2090s – a temperature that would render most human life nearly
impossible. But estimates vary greatly. Rainfall, says USAid, could
decrease in some places by 13% and increase in others by 32%.
All African countries know that they must adapt their farming,
restore their forests, improve their water supplies and grow their
economies quickly to have any chance of surviving climate change. But
the adaptation money pledged to these, the world’s poorest countries, by
the rich at successive UN climate summits has barely started to trickle
through.
Changes could be catastrophic. In North Africa, Egypt could lose 15%
of its wheat crop if temperatures increase 2C – 36% if they rise 4C.
Morocco expects crop yields to remain stable up to about 2030, but then
to drop quickly afterward.
Conversely, a
study of 11 west African countries
from the International Food Policy Research Institute expects some
farmers to be able to grow more food as temperatures rise and rainfall
increases. Climate change may mean Nigeria, Ghana and Togo can grow and
export more sorghum, raised for grain.
But most African countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change
and have no reason to expect it will improve their lot. Instead of
waiting for western money, they are pressing ahead where they can with
water conservation, tree planting and small-scale irrigation schemes.
Drought
and flood resistant crops are being adopted by the few, but the odds of
more severe droughts and floods are high and the resources to resist
them are slim.
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| A polar bear swims in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole. Photograph: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace
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Longyearbyen, Norway
The temperature in Longyearbyen on the Svalbard archipelago about 650 miles from the North Pole, averaged about
–4C
in April. If that sounds cold, consider that it was nearly 8C warmer
than the 30-year average for the time of year, and that April was no
outlier. The average temperature for the whole of 2016 in Longyearbyen
was
near freezing. Usually it is –10C.
“No region on the planet is experiencing more dramatic climate change than
the Arctic,” says Kim Holmén, international director of the
Norwegian Polar Institute,
who has lived on and off in Svalbard for 30 years. Although he is
unsure precisely why temperatures are rising so fast there, he says,
“make no mistake, there has never been a run of temperatures like this
ever recorded.”
Holmén works at the Zeppelin research station at Ny-Ålesund, where 11
countries study climate change, air quality and ice. “Water
temperatures on Svalbard have increased 10C or more in my time here,” he
says. The fjord, which used to be covered with ice one-metre thick in
winter, no longer freezes over. “We see temperatures changing, snow
melting earlier, new species of fish. We are seeing big unexpected
changes.”
Longyearbyen, home to some 2,100 people, is on borrowed time, Holmén
says. “There have been two avalanches there in the last year, both
defined as 1,000-year events. These are the types of events we expect to
see increasing. A whole part of Longyearbyen may have to be abandoned.
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| The remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard brings a relatively warm
stream of water from the south into the fjords and inlets which
moderates the climate enough that coastal areas witness an explosion of
green in the summer. In contrast, a cool ocean current keeps the eastern
coasts cold and snowy even during the summer. |
“The changes taking place now will influence [many other places]. The
global climate is clearly influenced by the Arctic. There will be
ramifications everywhere. We already see more precipitation in northern
Scandinavia and low pressure weather systems taking a more northerly
route.”
Holmén is backed by Julienne Stroeve, professor of polar observation
at University College London. I first met her in 2012 on a Greenpeace
ship which steamed north from Longyearbyen to within 300 miles of the
pole across a sea that would normally be iced over. She spoke from
Cambridge Bay in the Canadian high Arctic.
“2017 is already setting records,” she says. “There was a record low
[ice cover] for March this year, so that makes six months in a row with
record [or near record] low ice conditions. There are many ways the
Arctic is changing. You see it in melt season starting earlier than it
used to and taking longer to freeze up, in the melting of the Greenland
ice sheet and the Arctic glaciers, the warming of permafrost
temperatures, in increased coastal erosion, the northward migration of
the tree line and species, and in how local communities can no longer
keep their food in the ground because the thaw increased.”
Both Stroeve and Holmén are by nature cautious scientists, not given
to dramatic statements. But both say they are astonished, even scared,
by the speed at which the Arctic changes are happening.
“Given our current emission rates of 35 to 40 gigatons [of carbon
dioxide] per year we should see ice-free conditions in September in
about 20 years,” says Stroeve.
Longyearbyen residents are getting used to more extreme weather and
coming to terms with what it means for them. The town has created a new
risk assessment map and an avalanche warning system. Some parts of the
town may be deemed unsafe and will have to be moved. Others may be
protected by snow fences or walls.
“What is happening here is a very obvious case of climate change with
consequences for animals, plants and humans,” says Holmén. It is
happening across the Arctic much faster than we thought possible, and I
expect now to see an ice-free Arctic in 20 or so years.”
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| A dead Bodó – a fish that can remain alive for a couple of days out of
water – on the dry bed of the Negro river, near Manaus, Brazil.
Photograph: Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Images
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When Carlos Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading climatologists, lived in
Manaus in the 1970s, the population was a few hundred thousand and the
highest temperature ever recorded in the city had been 33.5C. The city
was surrounded by cool, dense forest and the greatest river on Earth.
Heat waves were rare and floods regular but manageable.
Today Manaus has more than 2 million people, and it and the wider
Amazon region are changing fast. In 2015, Nobre says, the temperature in
Manaus soared to 38.8C. “The Amazon is tropical and very hot, but when I
lived there the hot spells were rare,” he says. “Now we see many more
of them.” Not only that, he says, but dry seasons are longer by a week
than they were a decade ago and weather is more erratic.
Nobre notes that tree loss is exacerbating the effects of climate
change. “In many parts of continental South America one sees about 1C
warming in the Amazon, which can [be] mostly attributed to global
warming. In areas like Rondônia, where there has been widespread
deforestation, we see an additional 1C warming due to replacement of
forest – which is a high-evaporating vegetation – to pasture, which is
less evaporating.”
Hot spells in such a humid climate are a real hazard to health. Yet
adaptation to climate change in a teeming, poor city like Manaus is
non-existent for the many people who must struggle just to survive. For
the middle classes, air conditioning is now essential. The most city
authorities can do is plant trees to cool the streets and protect the
river banks from flooding.
The great uncertainty is how far the drying of the Amazon could
affect the rest of the world. “If you change the rainfall in the Amazon,
you could transport the impacts very far away,” Nobre says. “According
to my calculations, there will be a lot of impacts in southeastern
Brazil and also over equatorial Africa and the US. But we cannot
pinpoint what will happen.”
Perhaps most ominous is the fact that a positive feedback loop
appears to be in play. As the Amazon dries, Nobre says, tropical forest
will gradually shift to savanna, releasing carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere and further adding to global warming.
“When we see a dry season of over four months, or deforestation of
more than 40%, then there is no way back. Trees will slowly decay, and
in 50 years we would see a degraded savanna. It would take 100–200 years
to see a fully fledged savanna.”
The Amazon then would be unrecognizable, along with much of Earth.
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| A view of New York from Long Island after Hurricane Sandy hit in October
2012. Photograph: David Handschuh/New York Daily News/Getty Images
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New York, US
New York state may seem an unlikely climate hotspot, but research
confirms its status in the top league of potential change. Drawing on
the
US national climate assessment
and research by leading federal agencies and academics, it calculates
that temperatures statewide have risen about 1.3C since 1970, spring
begins a week sooner than it did just a few decades ago, there is less
winter snow and more intense downpours. Meanwhile, sea levels are rising
at nearly twice the global rate and birds and fish populations are all
moving north.
Even more dramatically, the latest scientific projections suggest trouble ahead. By the 2050s,
says the New York Department of Environmental Conservation,
sea levels could rise nearly 76cm (30 inches), storm surges and
flooding will be more common in coastal areas, and West Nile virus and
many other diseases could be prevalent.
But, says Carl Pope, climate advisor to the former New York mayor
Michael Bloomberg, if climate change is to be addressed, it must be led
by big cities like New York, which release nearly 70% of the global
emissions but also have the capacity to create solutions.
“Cities will always trump countries when it comes to climate change,”
he says. “Cities are where emissions are. They are mostly consumers of
fossil fuels, so they would like to use them as little as possible; they
have a natural instinct to save on fossil fuels. Also, they are not
very ideological. Improving quality of life is seen as a good.”
Mayors, Pope says, are now well ahead of most governments, leading
attempts to reduce air pollution which contributes heavily to climate
change, and eager to introduce electric cars and renewable energy.
“There is a great public will to improve the quality of life in cities,”
he says.
Pope identifies three groups of cities which he thinks will lead
others on climate: “Cities in Nordic countries that will be meticulous
about everything. Then there are a few in Latin America and Africa,
which will be unbelievably creative. A third group is in east Asia and
China, which will do things on a massive scale.”
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| A Taroyo family living along the coast of Manila Bay search for
salvageable items after their house was damaged by typhoon Koppu in
October 2015. Photograph: Romeo Ranoco/Reuters |
Manila, Philippines
When
Typhoon Haiyan
struck the city of Tacloban in November 2013, Yeb Sano was the
Philippines’ climate commissioner. He was distraught when I met him. He
believed that his brother who lived there had been killed along with
many thousands of others.
One hour later Sano broke down as he addressed the world’s diplomats.
It was the third super typhoon to hit the Philippines in three years,
and five of the 10 strongest typhoons had come in the previous eight
years. “Climate change is real and now,” he
told them in tears.
The Philippines is regularly ranked in lists of the
top few countries
most affected by climate change. “We are already experiencing climate
change impacts, including sea-level rise, hotter temperatures, extreme
weather events and changes in precipitation,” says Sano, who has now
left government to direct Greenpeace SE Asia.
“These in turn, result in human rights impacts, such as loss of homes
and livelihoods, water contamination, food scarcity, displacement of
whole communities, disease outbreaks, and even the loss of life.”
Scientists widely agree that the country, along with nearby
Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, is a hotspot. Analysis of 70 years’ of
government data,
published in the International Journal of Climatology last year,
shows a small decrease in the number of smaller typhoons that hit the
Philippines each year, but more intense ones. It is not conclusive
evidence, but previous studies have suggested the increase may be due to
rising sea-surface temperatures since the 1970s.
There is no doubt temperatures are rising on land. In Manila and the
surrounding metropolitan area, which has a population of more than 12m,
the tropical storms are more intense, the floods are more frequent, the
nights are hotter and there are fewer cool days, says the state
meteorological office,
Pagasa.
“There has been a significant increase [in the last 30 years] in the
number of hot days and warm nights and a decreasing trend in the number
of cold days and cold nights,” Alicia Ilaga, head of climate change in
the government’s agriculture department, told me in 2015. “Both maximum
and minimum temperatures are getting warmer. Extreme rainfall events are
becoming more frequent. In most parts ... the intensity of rainfall is
increasing.”
It’s not just Manila feeling the heat. In its latest
2014 report,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it expects life in
major Asian and African coastal cities like Manila, Guangzhou, Lagos, Ho
Chi Minh City, Kolkata and Shanghai to worsen as temperatures rise.
“Urban climate change–related risks are increasing (including rising
sea levels and storm surges, heat stress, extreme precipitation, inland
and coastal flooding, landslides, drought, increased aridity, water
scarcity, and air pollution) with widespread negative impacts on people
(and their health, livelihoods, and assets) and on local and national
economies and ecosystems,” it says. “These risks are amplified for those
who live in informal settlements and in hazardous areas and either lack
essential infrastructure and services or where there is inadequate
provision for adaptation.”
Food supplies are also threatened. I visited the
International Rice Research Institute
(IRRI) outside Manila. This research centre, funded by the world’s
richest nations to develop better strains of the crop that feeds nearly
half the world, has seen temperatures soar.
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| A farmer inspects his dried rice field in Praek Sriracha, Chainat province, Thailand. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images |
A few years ago, IRRI’s deputy director general, Bruce Tolentino,
called climate change the greatest global challenge in 50 years. “The
challenge now is to rapidly adapt farming to climate change with modern
varieties and feed a fast-growing global population, half of which
depends on rice as a staple food. One billion people go hungry every
day. In the 1990s, rice yields were growing 2% a year; now they are just
1%. Temperatures here have risen 2–4C.
Climate change
will reduce productivity. Rainfall is unpredictable and rice is grown
in areas like deltas that are prone to sea level rises. We have to gear
up for more challenging agro-ecological conditions, we need to be able
to use swampy areas and develop varieties that can be grown in salty or
flooded areas.”
IRRI has been working to develop rice varieties that can withstand
extreme climatic conditions such as droughts, floods, heat and cold, and
soil problems such as high salt and iron content.
New drought-tolerant varieties
that can produce up to 1.2 metric tons more per hectare [0.54 tons per
acre] than varieties that perform poorly under drought conditions have
been introduced to India, Nepal and elsewhere.
“Every city and every sector of society in the region is at risk,”
says Sano. “The IPCC tells us it will probably get 4C warmer. That means
everything will be compromised, from food and energy to settlements. We
are not ready. The challenge is too huge. We are very vulnerable.”
The bottom line
Whether it’s faster than average warming, more vulnerable than
average populations, or more severe than average drought, floods and
storms, it’s clear that some places are being hit harder than others by
Earth’s altered climate, and so face extra urgency when it comes to
adapting to a new reality.
But the bottom line is that climate hotspots intersect, and nowhere
will we escape the changes taking place. What happens in the Amazon
affects West Africa; the North American growing season may depend on the
melting of Arctic ice; flooding in Asian cities affected by warming on
the high Tibetan plateau. And urban areas ultimately depend on the
countryside.
We’re all in a hot spot now.
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