From blue to red, passing through yellow. This is the colour palette that characterises the trend in global temperatures over the past 100 years. What lies ahead? An international group of meteorologists sets it out.
This month a record concentration of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere was recorded: 415 ppm (parts per million). Never in history, since the appearance of humans on earth, have concentrations this high been recorded. Scorching decades lie ahead of us due to climate change, not only in Italy but also in northern Europe. This is what emerges from a graphical analysis by a group of international researchers who examined temperature data near Amsterdam from the 1920s to the present day, before making projections up to 2070. The data were compared with the average temperatures recorded in the 1980s.
The work produced by Frank Raes, an internationally renowned climatologist, within the framework of the Scienziati in residenza project, in collaboration with Jan De Cock of Studio Torino, Alessandro Dosio of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and David Surprenant, shows how temperatures have recorded continuous growth over the decades.
The four columns show temperatures compared with those of the 1980s. The first column relates to day-by-day temperatures, thus indicating weather conditions and their variability; the second and third columns highlight monthly and annual temperature averages, while the fourth column shows the differences in ten-year averages relative to the corresponding values in the 1980s, thus indicating the climate trend.
The colour red indicates that the temperature is much higher than in the 1980s, yellow means that temperatures are similar to those of the 1980s, while blue is used when temperatures are lower.
According to the International Energy Agency, in 2018 CO2 emissions grew by 1.7 per cent in the space of a year, reaching 33 gigatonnes (GW), all due to the increase in energy demand, which last year almost doubled compared to 2010. The use of coal for electricity generation remains the main cause of the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Coal accounts for 30 per cent of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
On 24 May the second global climate strike takes place. In the evening, at 9:00 pm, LifeGate and Triennale organised an Open talk with Fridays for Future Milan, in the garden of the Triennale di Milano. During the evening, the young people of Fridays for Future Milan present the movement's demands, seeking to understand what roles, strategies and, above all, actions those in the world of business, institutions and culture might take to address the ongoing climate crisis.