WMO: Heat extremes increasingly endanger older people

The consequences of climate change are not diminishing. This was the statement made by António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, at the presentation of the “WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate” . “The cost is the death of people and living beings as drought, fire, flood and extreme storms claim their victims,” Guterres said at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

The much-noticed report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shouldn’t give the golf industry too much hope either, because it clearly shows that temperatures are continuing to rise and that weather phenomena are therefore still an issue. According to Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General , a recent ten-year forecast by the British Met Office indicated that another global annual temperature record is likely within the next five years. Accordingly, the global average temperature from 2020 to 2024 is 1.06 to 1.62 degrees above the average of the years 1850 to 1900.

Among other things, the point that deals with the effects of extreme heat on the health of people in Europe is also interesting. ‘Record temperatures in Australia, India, Japan and Europe in 2019 impacted health and well-being,’ it notes. “In June, south-west and central Europe were hit by a heatwave, resulting in some deaths in Spain and France. The stronger heatwave hit at the end of July and mainly affected central and western Europe. The Netherlands was followed by 2964 deaths returned, 400 more than in an average summer week.” In France, between June and mid-September, there were over 20,000 hospital emergencies and 5,700 home visits by doctors, which were only attributed to the extreme heat. Unfortunately, the report does not provide explicit figures for Germany, Austria and Switzerland in this segment.

The entire “WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019” is available for download here .