Climate change will lead to human exodus, extreme costs

Nov 16, 2011, 10:03 GMT

Berlin - Ten days before UN talks on climate change open in South Africa, the UN's top climate panel is slated to release Friday a report on extreme weather events.

The report, from the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is expected to focus on how global weather patterns are supposed to change if nothing is done to lower carbon emissions blamed for global warming, said Mojib Latif, a climate scientist at the University of Kiel.

'The poor countries will be especially hit,' Latif told dpa.

If greenhouse gas levels continue at current levels, the Earth's temperature is projected to rise 4 to 5 degrees centigrade by the year 2100 compared to pre-industrial temperatures, scientists said. Since land masses heat faster than water, the increase could even reach 6 degrees on some continents. That's two-to-three times as much as the 2-degree threshold set by the IPCC to avoid catastrophic effects on people and the environment.

The report is expected to offer few surprises, as the IPCC outlined similar effects in its 2007 global report. But updated details are expected.

Latif, who works with the Leibniz Institute for Marine Science in Kiel, said rising temperatures will bring more frequent drought to Africa and more destructive storms to South and South-East Asia.

The report is also expected to emphasize the increased risk of heat waves, especially in southern Europe.

'In the south and east of Germany, temperatures could reach in the worst case 50 degrees,' Latif said. In northern Germany, temperatures will exceed 30 degrees Celsius, bringing worse storms and even tornadoes.

'And on the Mediterranean, we could expect hurricanes such as never before seen, like those in the Caribbean,' Latif said.

The financial consequences of such extreme weather events are enormous, with just one event costing billions of euros (dollars), Latif said. 'What have the floods on the Elbe and Oder rivers already cost?' he said. Last year's floods in Pakistan show that economies can take years to recover from natural disasters.

A further problem is impending human exodus in rural areas, such as Bangladesh and elsewhere.

'People in the Maldives are already looking for alternatives,' Latiff said, referring to rising ocean levels around the Indian Ocean islands. 'It's unimaginable that we let it come this far, that something like this can actually happen,' Latif said.

Carbon emissions reached record highs in 2010, showing the largest rise ever since record keeping began.

'It's crazy: Exactly the opposite is happening from what should have happened,' Latif said.