The head of the European Space Agency (ESA) has warned economic damage from heatwaves and drought could dwarf Europe’s energy crisis as he called for urgent action to tackle climate change.
Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuter’s successive heatwaves along with wildfires, shrinking rivers and rising land temperatures as measured from space left no doubt about the toll on agriculture and other industries from climate change.
“Today, we are very concerned about the energy crisis, and rightly so. But this crisis is very small compared to the impact of climate change, which is of a much bigger magnitude and really has to be tackled extremely fast,” he said.
He was speaking in an interview as heatwaves and floods generate concerns over extreme weather across the globe.
More than 57,200 hectares have been swallowed by wildfire in France this year, nearly six times the full-year average.
In Spain, a prolonged dry spell made July the hottest month since at least 1961.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake and Italy’s Po River are at their lowest recorded levels. France’s Loire is now on the watch list.
That follows record temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) that placed a renewed focus on climate risks at July’s Farnborough Airshow in southern England, where Aschbacher said the issue was humanity’s biggest challenge.
“It’s pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before,” Aschbacher told Reuters this week.
Soaring air temperatures are not the only problem. The Earth’s skin is getting warmer too.
Aschbacher said ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite series had measured “extreme” land surface temperatures of more than 45C in Britain, 50C in France and 60C in Spain in recent weeks.
Land surface temperature drives air circulation.
“It’s really the whole ecosystem that is changing very, very fast and much faster than what scientists expected until some years ago,” he said.
“It is drought, fires, the intensity of storms, everything coupled together, which are the visible signs of climate change.”
As changes in temperature also become more marked, winds become stronger and unleash harsher storms.
“Typhoons are much more powerful than they used to be in terms of wind speed and therefore damage,” Aschbacher said.