A woman uses a fan to keep cool on a bus on Westminster Bridge in London, Britain, July 11, 2022. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)
Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years, the largest increase for any continent in the world, a report from the World Meteorological Organization showed in early November.
LONDON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The ultimate driver of climate change has been carbon emissions and thus each individual has a duty to reduce his or her carbon footprint, Ric Williams, professor in earth, ocean and ecological sciences at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom (UK), told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"All climate models are showing that the more carbon we emit, the warmer the planet will become," he said.
"So, anything that we can do to reduce our energy usage, our consumption of goods, all of that is ultimately beneficial or needed to moderate climate change."
A new study published by the Met Office, the UK's national weather service, on Thursday confirmed that 2022 was the UK's warmest year on record. The provisional annual average temperature in the country slightly exceeded 10 degrees Celsius for the first time since comparable records began in 1884.
Back in December, the national weather service also predicted that 2023 would be one of the Earth's hottest years on record and is set to be the tenth year in succession that temperatures have exceeded pre-industrial levels by at least 1 degree Celsius.
"This is exceptional," Williams said. "We're expecting hotter and drier summers, and conversely, warmer and wetter winters, and there being more frequent extreme events."
Asked whether the changes represent natural variability or are due to anthropogenic effects involving carbon emissions, the expert explained that when running climate models, "we are unable to explain the recent rises in global temperature unless we include carbon emissions."
"There's a very strong scientific consensus now that carbon emissions are driving the warming of the planet," he said.
Williams told Xinhua that over the last ten years, the evidence had come through that what humans are seeing is exceptional. Citing the forecast of the Met Office, he said these consecutive changes were significant.
"We can always have an individual year that is warmer or cooler, but when it turns to decades being warmer than average, then it's almost certainly due to carbon emissions and anthropogenic effects," he said.
A man sits in Greenwich Park on a hot summer day in London, Britain, July 18, 2022. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua)
In July 2022, the UK recorded its highest ever temperature (40.3 degrees Celsius at Coningsby in Lincolnshire). The extreme heat has put mounting strain on the country's infrastructure, raising serious concerns.
The scholar noted that the UK needed to do more to prepare for climate variability, both extreme cold and extreme heat.
"In the last heatwave, we had outbreaks of wildfires occurring and parts of our infrastructure were starting to fail. So the central challenge for the government is to prepare us for what we should expect if we lived in southern Spain."
Other parts of Europe have not fared better. Temperatures there have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years, the largest increase for any continent in the world, a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed in early November.
People enjoy themselves at the seaside in Nice, southern France, Nov. 2, 2022. October 2022 was the hottest month of October in France since 1945, with an average temperature of 17.2 degrees Celsius, the French national meteorological service Meteo-France said on Wednesday. (Photo by Serge Haouzi/Xinhua)
"The heatwaves that we experienced in the summer were actually much more pronounced in Spain and Portugal," and there was extreme flooding occurring in Germany, Williams said. "These climate extremes are being experienced across Europe and indeed across the world."
But controversies arose when many countries in the region considered turning back to coal to secure energy supplies during the prolonged energy crisis.
"We're in a difficult energy crisis right now. We all want the lights to stay switched on," and because of that, some governments intend to use coal-fired power stations to boost electricity supplies, he said.
But "this has to be a temporary measure. It's certainly heading in the wrong direction in terms of offsetting our carbon emissions," he added. "We've got particular problems now with the energy crisis ... but this shouldn't alter our longer-term plans to move towards non-fossil based forms of energy." ■
