Why wildfires could be more extreme in the future
A damning report on the state of climate change was released by the U.N. on Monday. It came as wildfires raged across parts of the U.S., Russia, Greece and Turkey. Climate scientist Richard Allan, a lead author of the report, told Yahoo News that fires and other extreme weather events could become more intense if global warming is not tackled effectively.
Video Transcript
EVE HARTLEY: These are the scenes on the Greek Island of Avila as wildfires forced people to flee from their homes. Fires broke out across Greece during the country's worst heatwave in three decades with searing temperatures and dry heat causing tinderbox conditions. Over the past month, fires have also been raging across the world from the US, to Russia, to Turkey.
The Dixie fire is California's second largest wildfire in the state's history. Nearly 1,000 structures have been impacted by the fire and more are still at risk. And events such as these could become more extreme because of climate change researchers are warning. On Monday, the UN released a damning report about the state of climate change across the world. Here's Richard Allen, one of the authors of the report.
RICHARD ALLAN: Well, it's certainly showing a stark message that humans are causing the planet to warm. And that without rapid strong and sustained cuts in carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, we're heading into a world where it will be not pleasant for many particularly the vulnerable to live.
EVE HARTLEY: The report warned that heatwaves droughts and storms that can cause wildfires and flooding are directly caused by global warming.
RICHARD ALLAN: These events are caused by the weather. So the weather generates heat waves, heavy rain, and associated flooding or wildfire weather conditions. But when these ingredients come together in a warmer world, they will be more intense or more severe than they would otherwise be.
So it's-- it's not really a matter of there'll be more events. It's just the events that we do see will be more severe. And so in a way of promoting moderate extreme events up to really extreme, extreme events. And the most extreme events we see today will be kind of elevated to unprecedented events in the future.
EVE HARTLEY: But some of the worst impacts of climate change can still be avoided.
RICHARD ALLAN: If we do follow these rapid and sustained cuts in carbon dioxide, so that we get to what's called net zero emissions, where the any emissions of carbon dioxide are canceled out by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. For example, with deforestation, or removal of carbon dioxide in other ways.
Then yes, we can get to a situation where in a world that we will be able to adapt to. And it won't be easy because there will still be these extreme events and there may be concurrent and compound extremes that affect multiple breadbasket regions for example. That will need to as a planet to deal with.
But we'll be able to adapt to these will be able to move resources around to adapt to these-- these changes in the climate in the future if we limit the warming based on what the science shows to below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial or even 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial.
