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CLIMATE WATCH - Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are taking the world’s time-honored ecosystems, like the world-famous Amazon River, down onto their knees. The problem is greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 trap heat and excessive levels, like we’ve been experiencing, create extreme heat; it’s a direct connection that’s destroying the world’s legendary ecosystems. Over time, the biosphere rejects human meddling by undercutting these wondrous natural systems that support human life. The conclusion is too dreadful to discuss.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is so alarmed that it’s calling for “Urgent Action.”
According to Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the WMO: ““Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies. Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action.” (Source: Climate Warning as World’s Rivers Dry Up at Fastest Rate for 30 Years, The Guardian, October 7, 2024)
If there’s any doubt about the reality of climate change as a threat, the mighty Amazon River is a real time testament flashing warning signals of deep trouble. Large regions of the 4,000-mile waterway are disappearing right before our eyes because of global warming’s most lethal weapon, drought!
Devastating drought is clobbering portions of the world’s most famous river, a vital commercial superhighway that delivers goods throughout the South American continent: “The Amazon is both the world’s largest river by volume and the longest river system, emerging in the Peruvian Andes and crossing five countries before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to a rich variety of aquatic life, like piranhas and pink river dolphins. In some areas, the river is still very deep — up to 400 feet — and can accommodate ocean liners.” (Source: A Changing Climate is Scorching the World’s Biggest River, The New York Times, October 8, 2024)
Like elsewhere throughout the world, average temperatures in South America are rising beyond safe limits and abnormal severe droughts ensue. Regions of the Amazon have seen temperature rises of 2°C since the 1980s or the maximum before triggering several enormous problems, such as warned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Well, we now know that the IPCC was correct to warn of serious problems as oil producers spew out enormous quantities of CO2 blanketing the atmosphere. The Amazon River is living, and dying, proof of the CO2-global warming-drought connection.
According to Bernardo Flores, Federal University of Santa Catarina/Brazil, all signs point to more impossible-to-deal-with temperatures coming down the pike. Already, back-to-back years of severe drought have scorched the Amazon. According to Dr Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM Amazônia, “The river’s had no chance to recover,” Ibid.
Climate scientists are dumbfounded by the onset of rivers of the world drying up at the fastest pace in modern history. Ominously, major rivers are hitting new lows at the same time as major reservoirs drop dangerously low. Last year more than 50% of global river catchment areas hit abnormally low levels with “most being in deficit.” It’s deadly serious global warming at work that was seen to a lesser extent in 2021 and 2022. The Amazon, Mississippi, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Danube, Loire, Mekong, and several others have been hit with abnormally low conditions over the past three years.
Deceivingly, there’s a rhythm to the onset of drought and floods not necessarily hitting consecutively year after year but every-other-year or every-third-year, like once-in-100-year floods compressed in time. Massive disasters are no longer once every 100-years. They recur every few years. For example, according to NASA, since 2000, severe drought hit Brazil every 5 years like clockwork but now it’s back-to-back. Nobody knows what to expect next. It’s literally “hold one’s breath” as to the survivability of the world’s biggest most famous river, easily spotted from outer space.
Like the Sword of Damocles, a scourge of drought threatens the world like never before. For example, two years ago in Europe: “In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube. Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production.” (Source: Europe’s Rivers Run Dry as Scientists Warn Drought Could be Worst in 500 Years, The Guardian, Aug. 13, 2022).
China in the same year: “The impact of the drying Yangtze has been enormous. In Sichuan, a province of 84 million people, hydropower makes up about 80% of electricity capacity. Much of that comes from the Yangtze River, and as its flow slows down, power generation has dwindled, leaving authorities there to order all its factories shut for six days. The province is seeing around half the rain it usually does and some reservoirs have dried up entirely, according to state news agency Xinhua.” (CNN)
The Hydrological Cycle
According to WMO, rising temperatures have dramatically altered the hydrological cycle of the world, it has accelerated and become unpredictably erratic. Society is facing growing issues of either too much or too little water. On the one hand, warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, with atmospheric rivers cascading bucket-loads of water, creating flash floods. Conversely more heat brings on evaporation and drying of soils leading to severe drought. It’s all heat related. The planet has more heat than the hydrological system can handle. Meanwhile, the world’s water towers, e.g., European Alps, are melting away, threatening commercial rivers and adequate potable water supplies.
Yet, in the face of abrupt damaging climate change, fossil fuel companies have publicly declared their intentions to crank up oil and gas production like never before, quadrupling production from newly approved projects by 2030 (Global Energy Monitor), the outlook for world natural resources like the Amazon River and the Amazon rainforest is beyond shaky. It’s dreadful. And everybody has good reason to be nervous about too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases altering the most significant sources of ongoing life on the planet. There are way too many things going wrong, like over-heated sea waters generating big and bigger hurricanes, to ignore the necessity of getting off fossil fuels as soon as possible.
The WMO is calling for Urgent Action by the nations of the world. Everybody knows what needs to be done.
(Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 published articles appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide.)
