Report: World to see more extreme weather

Nov 18, 2011, 20:42 GMT

Kampala - Climate change will cause more extreme weather in the coming years, making winter days colder and summer times hotter. There could also be increased risks of floods and droughts in some regions of the world, a new UN report released on Friday warned.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also says there is a high likelihood that greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, such as coal burning, are influencing weather patterns.

Poorer countries' economies will likely be battered the most by the wild weather, as food insecurity might increase owing to unstable annual productions while fishing capacities decrease. Tourism, a major source of income in developing nations, could also be affected.

Small island nations will probably face rising sea levels, the wind speed of tropical cyclones will increase and hot days will become more frequent and hotter, the scientists writing for the IPCC report estimated.

'The reports shows that risks of climate changes are rising and we need to manage this rising risk of disasters. So we need to be able to help the people and regions affected by them before they happen,' said Maarten van Aalst, who works with the International Red Cross and was one of the experts who contributed to the new report.

The report, which calls on government to take 'low regret' measures - which would mitigate climate change without a heavy cost burden - to help shield populations from changing weather patterns, is being released as 2011, considered a year with particularly extreme weather, comes to a close.

Texas and the Horn of Africa witnessed particularly difficult droughts while Thailand suffered more than 500 deaths due to flooding.

'There are many options for decreasing risk. The best options can provide benefits across a wide range of possible levels of climate change,' said Vicente Barros, who helped the IPCC with the report.