Wed 20 July 2022:
A significant portion of Europe could experience “very high ozone pollution” as a result of heatwaves, according to scientists with the European Union’s climate monitoring service.
“Very high levels of ozone pollution in southern Europe caused by the heatwave could now affect northwestern regions in the coming week,” said a statement on Tuesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CAMS).
Scientists anticipate that after “extremely high surface ozone pollution” was observed across western and southern Europe, ozone pollution might affect the “northwestern regions.”
“In mid-July, daily maximum values of surface ozone, which peak during the middle of the day, reached unhealthy levels in Portugal, Spain and Italy with some locations measuring in excess of 200 μg/m3,” it said.
Ozone pollution is expected to reach its highest in Europe on July 18 – 20, according to CAMS scientists.
While the recent heatwave in Spain and Portugal claimed the lives of more than 330 people, Tuesday’s temperature in the UK set a record.
Wildfires have destroyed thousands of hectares of forests and other land in southwest France.
Heatwaves expected to become standard in Europe in summer
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) belives that current strong heatwaves in Europe are to become the norm in Europe during the summer months.
“These kind of heatwaves are becoming more and more frequent during the coming decades and the negative trend in climate will continue until at least 2060, independent of our success in climate mitigation,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said on Tuesday.
He hopes the current events are a wake-up call for European governments and that they have consequences in the next elections in democratic countries, he said.
However, Taalas said it might be too late to save glaciers as the WMO expects they will keep melting for hundreds or thousands of years, as sea level rises.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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