RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to some scientists, temperatures are not rising at the same rate everywhere in the world: in the Americas, the North is more affected than the South, rich countries more than middle-income countries, and coasts, especially the Atlantic, more than inland. However, some of these trends may yet change.
Compared with the 1950-1980 average, North America, Central America, and the Caribbean have increased by nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius, say these scientists. About four-fifths of the increase occurred in just one decade, the 1990s. This was the period when global warming finally came to the fore, with the ozone hole (now shrinking) and the “greenhouse effect” as protagonists.
But a gradual change in consumption patterns, especially in energy, facilitated by access to better technologies and the existence of new regulatory mechanisms and international treaties and protocols, has slowed (though not reversed) the increase in the 21st century, when South America took the lead: from 2003 to 2015, the increase was the same as in the previous 25 years. The rate of temperature increase doubled.
Still, North America (the United States and especially Canada) has recorded the most significant increase in average temperature since the 1960s, and by a wide margin. It is no coincidence that they are the two most economically developed nations on the continent: Fossil fuels were essential to consolidating growth and prosperity, and this is the result.
That’s still the case today, especially for countries that want to move up into the higher-income club.
These countries see it more as a kind of redistributive imbalance that attempts are being made right now to introduce international emissions caps: when they are no longer as necessary for those who rely on carbon to meet their growth targets.
While the Paris Agreement already includes offsetting mechanisms to even the odds, specifying its implementation during the climate summit in Glasgow leaves open the discussion of how much weight each country should assume to stop warming.
In the Americas, the policy implications of this discrepancy are particularly evident in the case of large countries that need more funding with a transactional approach, such as Mexico or Brazil.
However, the most significant gap remains geographic: the Andean countries have seen the smallest increase, regardless of their income level. La Paz (Bolivia), the highest seat of government on the continent, is increasing by 0.64 degrees Celsius.
Puno and Cusco in mountainous Peru are at similar levels. But it’s enough to travel a little north to get near a warmer environment for the numbers to double: this is the case with cities like Medellin (Colombia), Guayaquil (Ecuador), and virtually all the capitals of Central America.
Scientists have found that exposure to the sea, especially in temperate zones and even more so on the eastern slope (the Atlantic coast), is responsible for a more significant increase in temperature. For example, the entire urbanized edge of New England, from Edison to Boston, has seen a 2.8-degree increase over the last sixty years.
Halifax, Canada, a bit further north (3.08 degrees), Anchorage (Alaska’s capital, 3.05 degrees), and Winnipeg in the Canadian province of Manitoba, the city across the continent, have seen the most significant increase (+3.41 degrees).
The same is true for places with relatively dry climates or completely deserted areas. The Mexican-American border (Phoenix, Arizona: 2.5 degrees Celsius increase; Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 2.35 degrees) is a good example.
This can also be observed in northeastern Brazil, where the semi-arid and Cerrado regions are the most affected: Juazeiro (BA) and Timon (MA) recorded an increase of over 30% compared to the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Zooming in on Brazil down to the level of individual weather stations, the general pattern becomes more apparent. Still, more or less deviant expected points also appear in certain areas, indicating innate variability.
The more we focus on a specific location, the more likely we are to find inconsistent data with the warming trend. However, these particular variations do not invalidate the global trend reflected in the statistical averages. They are merely expressions of the inevitable peculiarities of a worldwide phenomenon.
Source: El Pais