Floods, extremely harsh winters, heat waves and increasingly strong hurricanes in many parts of the world show that the climate has got out of control for some time. According to a forecast of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), released yesterday, these phenomena will be more likely in coming decades. 2010 already was the hottest year ever recorded, but in the next the thermometer will rise even more. Ghassam Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) of the WMO now asked the countries representatives at the COP 16, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Cancun, Mexico, to improve their infrastructure to be prepared for extreme weather conditions.
The British consulting company Maplecroft presented in October a ranking of the most climate vulnerable countries, in which Brazil appeared on the 81st place of 170 with "high risk" classification. Matthew Bunce, one of the researchers of the study, warned of remarkable changes in Brazilian climatic parameters, such as rainfall, temperature and humidity, in the next 30 years. According to that, the eastern regions of the country are more affected by the risks of climate change and vulnerable to floods and droughts. Extreme changes are foreseen only for about 30% of the Brazilian territory, but exactly there large parts of the population live. The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) already had to correct their forecast of climate change made three years ago. The foreseen increase in temperature until 2010 up to 4°C in the Amazon has been elevated to 5°C in the northern region, while in the south, the thermometer will only rise up to 3°C.
Climatologist Jose Marengo from the INPE said now, the average temperature would rise until 2050 more than 3°C in many parts of Brazil and trigger a series of changes. The Caatinga would turn into a desert, the Amazon rain forest diminish and continue to go through severe droughts, in which various species would become extinct. In the South, however, the amount of precipitation would increase and threaten the cities with flooding and landslides.