Whether the global temperature will rise by 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius - some believe that this difference does not really matter. But the facts show otherwise: even half a degree more can cost a lot of life.
If a person's temperature rises from 36.6 to 38.6 degrees Celsius - there are consequences. Even a seemingly small increase causes the person to feel uncomfortable and the body can no longer function normally. It is similar with the planet Earth.
Since the end of the 19th century, when the combustion of fossil fuels began to progress, our planet has warmed by an average of more than one degree, and in some places temperatures have risen above that value.
One of them is the Arctic. According to the Arctic Monitoring and Evaluation Program (AMAP), a working group of the Intergovernmental Arctic Council, the average annual temperature in the region rose by three degrees Celsius between 1971 and 2019 - and this poses major problems for the region's ecosystem.
A small rise in temperature - a great loss of species
In a study published this year in the journal "Cryosphere", British researchers show a loss of 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017. According to their data, the lost volume would be enough to cover the entire Great Britain with a layer of ice one hundred meters thick.
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, University College London and the University of Leeds used satellite data to conclude that around 800 billion tonnes of ice were lost annually in the 1990s. By 2017, that number had even increased - to 1.2 trillion tons per year.
Will polar bears become extinct by the end of the century?
Stephen Amstrup, a scientist at the American Polar Bears International, has been researching wildlife in the Arctic since the 1980s and has seen the changes with his own eyes.
"I remember seeing sea ice on the coast of northern Alaska in the middle of summer - it was never far from the coast," Amstrup told DW. "Now the ice is hundreds of miles from the sea at the same time of year. "If you had said something like that to me at the beginning of my career, I would have said that you are crazy," says Amstrup.
In a 2020 study published in the Nature Climate Journal, he and his colleagues predicted that most polar bears that feed on seals could disappear by the end of the century if temperatures continue to rise. "Seahorses on which seals rest are like a polar bear dinner table," says Amstrup. "On land, there is hardly anything as nutritious for them as seals."
In a two-degree warming scenario, they would face ice-free flights every ten years.
Polar bears are by no means the only victims of the global rise in temperature. For 19 percent of the species of animals from the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the probability of extinction increases.
One species has already been destroyed: a tiny rodent Melomys rubicola that lived on a small sandy island on top of the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia. It was officially recognized as an extinct species in 2019 - the first mammal to disappear due to climate change caused by man. Rising sea levels are believed to have destroyed its food sources and habitat.
Melomys rubicola - the first mammal that is no longer there due to climate change caused by man.
Extreme consequences below and above water
With global warming, the oceans are also warming - with direct effects on coral reefs that are nurseries and storehouses for many marine animals. Warmer water causes the corals to expel vital seaweed from their tissues - and then they starve and dry out, which leads to bleaching. This will destroy the corals in the long run.
Recent research has shown that Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral since 1995. An intergovernmental panel on climate change warns that if temperatures rise above two degrees Celsius, corals will be almost completely eradicated.
Higher temperatures will also change people's lives. We will face more extreme weather conditions: heat waves, droughts, floods and cyclones. How extreme and how often, it will depend on how much the temperature rises.
If the world warms by two degrees Celsius by 2100, 37 percent of the world's population could be exposed to strong heat waves at least every five years, according to the IPCC. In a 1.5 degree scenario, that would affect half as many people.
According to a 2018 study by the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC), two-thirds of the population will experience increasing droughts as the world warms.
Fire coral: then and now
More climate refugees
The UN refugee agency estimates that extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels already make more than 20 million people move to other parts of their countries every year. Relocation is already a problem for small island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as in the Caribbean.
"Countries like the Marshall Islands can implement adaptation plans to a certain level of sea level rise," said Helene Jacott de Combe, a climatologist at the University of the South Pacific, author of the IPCC and adviser to the Marshall Islands government. "But if it continues to grow, at some point those islands will no longer be inhabitable."
The Pacific island nation of Fiji is also facing a new reality. After being hit by twelve cyclones and other extreme weather events since 2016, the government has embarked on a relocation program. More than 40 coastal communities have to move inland, and six have already done so.
Given the far-reaching consequences of only a small increase in temperature, the Paris Climate Agreement aims to limit global growth to 1.5 degrees Celsius in this century. However, model calculations suggest that, given current trends, the world is well on its way to reaching that level of warming in the next 15 years.
Without radical measures today, the rise in temperature is unlikely to be slowed. According to The Climate Action Tracker, an independent group of organizations analyzing government climate action, temperatures would rise to 2 to 2.2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, even if all current promises and plans the world is filled. The group estimates that this is an optimistic forecast.
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