2023-09-06 10:01:05
Global warming and air quality “go hand in hand and must be tackled together”, according to the secretary general of the WMO.
While several temperature records have been broken in France since the beginning of September, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is sounding the alarm. In 2022, heat waves caused megafires in the northwestern United States and lowered air quality to “dangerous levels“, say the experts of the institution, in a new report published Wednesday, September 6.
Made more intense and more frequent by climate change, “Heat waves degrade air quality, which has repercussions on the human health, ecosystems, agriculture and, in fact, on our daily lives”, says WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. During the summer of 2022, the hottest on record in Europe, ozone concentrations “above the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO)” have been recorded in “hundreds of monitoring sites” across the continent, warns the WMO in its press release. Desert dust levels were also “abnormally high”over the Mediterranean in Europe.
>> MAP. Visualize the cloud of desert dust currently crossing France
This dangerous cocktail of aerosols (particles in suspension) associated with high temperatures, has repercussions “on health and well-being”, say the experts. High ozone concentrations have also caused serious damage to farmers. At the World level, “crop losses due to ozone average between 4.4% and 12.4% for staple food crops, with wheat and soybean losses as high as 15% to 30% in major agricultural regions of India and China”notes the WMO.
An “even more extreme” summer 2023
Days following the publication of a study that found air pollution poses a greater risk to global health than smoking or alcohol consumption, Petteri Taalas insists that climate change and air quality “go hand in hand and must be tackled together to break this vicious circle”.
Faced with these phenomena, the experts insist on the role of revegetation, in particular to fight once morest “urban heat islands”, or the excess temperature that is measured in cities, due to the omnipresence of bitumen. Experts cite temperature and CO2 measurements taken at two parks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which show that green spaces help to mitigate the impact of rising temperatures and CO2 concentration.
>> Record fires, extreme temperatures… The summer of 2023 summarized in six graphs
If the bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization concerns the year 2022, “ce to what
we are witnessing in 2023 is even more extreme”with a historically hot month of July and a “intense heat in many areas of the hemisphere
Nord”averts Petteri Taalas.
This summer, the fires ravaged “huge expanses” in Canada, damage “tragic” and at least 100 deaths in Hawaii and caused “serious damage and loss of life” in Mediterranean. Finally they are “responsible for lowering air quality to dangerous levels for millions of people and moving plumes of smoke across the Atlantic and into the Arctic”, further notes the secretary of the WMO.
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