Extreme weather carries big risks for the world: UN panel

At the height of the storm that hit northwestern Alaska last week, Sandra Quinn, the principal of the school outside Little Diomede in the middle of the Bering Sea, took this photo of huge waves scooping up sea cans. According to a Nov. 18 report, the Arctic is likley see more extreme events such as that storm, which was called an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening storm of an epic magnitude rarely experienced.” (FILE PHOTO)

Could this become a yearly occurrence? Last August, Parks Canada closed down a large section of Auyuittuq’s Akshayuk Pass after hikers were stranded and some injured when they attempted to cross swollen rivers. A group of hikers can be seen here in on a sandbar in the middle of a river as they await help from Parks Canada staff overhead in a helicopter. (FILE PHOTO)

More disasters like the mix of warm temperatures, high water and erosion which put hikers in extreme danger last August in Auyuittuq National Park, lie ahead for the Arctic.

And Arctic coastal regions can look to a future which holds the likelihood of more extreme events, like last week’s “dangerous and life-threatening” storm in Alaska, taking place.

The world needs to prepare for these extreme events and disasters which can kill and wreak havoc on infrastructure and the environment.

That’s the sobering message delivered by 220 scientists from 69 countries who collaborated on the “Special Report on managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters,” released Nov. 18 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report — now only available in a summary form — integrates their expertise in climate science, disaster risk management, and adaptation to look at how the world can “reduce and manage the risks of extreme events and disasters in a changing climate.”

“We need to be worried,” said Maarten van Aalst, the director of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and a lead author, at a Nov. 18 news conference in Kampala, Uganda. “Risk has already increased dramatically.”

This increased risk also comes with a large global pricetag of up to $200 billion a year.

The scientists’ new findings that weigh into the Arctic’s future include:

• Increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes which “will occur in the 21st century on the global scale.”

• Changes in heat waves, glacial retreat and/or permafrost degradation which will affect “high mountain phenomena such as slope instabilities, movements of mass, and glacial lake outburst floods;”

• Average sea level rise that will contribute to “upward trends in extreme sea levels in extreme coastal high water levels” — that is, to higher tides, and worse storm surges.

The report’s authors say local knowledge, along with scientific and technical knowledge, can improve disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Early-warning systems, changes in insurance coverage, improvements to infrastructure, and the expansion of social safety nets can also help cope, they say.

But they acknowledge that short-term risk reduction won’t eliminate the long-term melt risk in places like the Arctic where former IPCC assessments have predicted a temperature rise of 5 C or more for the Arctic before 2100.

In this new report, the scientists stop short of putting all the blame on man-made climate change — from the production of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

“Many extreme weather and climate events continue to be the result of natural climate variability,” they say.

But they also note that “some extremes have changed” due to man-made causes and that since 1950 there have been more extreme weather and climate events.

Countries can more effectively manage disaster risks if they make sure national development and regional plans look at those risks, they suggest.

Populations can become more resilient before disasters strike, they say.

So countries should adopt climate change adaptation strategies, targeting vulnerable areas and groups.

The disaster risk report comes nine days before representatives from more than 190 nations will meet in Durban, South Africa for a UN climate change conference, COP-17.

They’ll be trying to hammer out some new global agreement to curb climate change and deal with its worst impacts.