with the collaboration of Valeria Pagani

Data on the mean annual temperature of more than 100,000 European municipalities reveal that over the past fifty years the Old Continent has been warming rapidly, reaching values never recorded before. Around one third of municipalities between the 1960s and today have registered an average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (°C), with some areas reaching peaks of 5°C, according to a recent study by the European think tank Obct\European data journalism network and distributed by the European citizens' initiative stopglobalwarming.eu.

While it is above all capitals and their surrounding areas that are bearing the brunt of the heat increase caused primarily by high levels of urbanisation, this rise has also affected less densely populated areas.

Every year glaciers lose more snow than they accumulate

The analysis of the data shows that Iceland, a name derived from Old Norse meaning precisely "land of ice", has recorded the highest increase in mean temperature (+3.43°C) since 1960. The extreme case of the municipality of Reykjanesbær, in the south-west of the island, was monitored here: it has seen an extraordinary increase of +5.8°C. This municipality, one of the most populous in Iceland, has a population of around 19,000 and a large airport in its vicinity — factors that only partially account for its status as the most overheated municipality in Europe.

On the basis of measurements carried out by the Icelandic Meteorological Office, Iceland's national meteorological service and also a government agency of the Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources, the mass balance of Icelandic glaciers has been negative since 1995. This means that every year the glaciers lose more snow than they are able to accumulate. As a result of rising temperatures, they have lost around 250 km³ of ice since 1995, corresponding to approximately 7 per cent of their total volume.

Mean temperature rises most in central Europe

Immediately after Iceland, the first countries to have reported an exceptional increase in mean annual temperature are found mainly in eastern Europe: they are Latvia (+2.96°C), Lithuania (+2.75°C), Hungary (+2.73°C), the United Kingdom (+2.71°C), Slovakia (+2.47°C) and Poland (+2.38°C).

"There are processes that, by triggering positive feedback, can amplify warming locally: one of these, for example, is determined by the reduced extent of the snow cover and, consequently, the loss of its albedo," explains Silvio Gualdi, senior scientist at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (Cmcc). Albedo is the power given by the whiteness of snow to reflect solar radiation: less snow means less reflection of solar rays and more heat. "The soil and vegetation left exposed absorb greater radiation, leading to a rise in temperatures. Mechanisms such as this can explain how, for example in Iceland and in other areas usually affected by snowfall, warming can today be so pronounced."

Budapest is the city most affected by heat

When it comes to cities, it is the Hungarian capital, Budapest, that holds the record as the centre most affected by heatwaves: in its area, mean temperatures have risen by around 4°C over the past decade. András Lukács, president of the NGO Levegő Munkacsoport, recounts: "Here asphalt and cars are everywhere. In some neighbourhoods there is less than one square metre of green space per inhabitant: due to property speculation, many green areas have been turned into car parks, shopping centres and wider roads."

The situation is the same for Riga (+4.39°C), Liverpool (+3.81°C) and Rome (+3.68°C), but the increase in heat has also struck smaller centres such as Oppland (+4.08°C) in Norway, or the ski resort of Ischgl (+3.82°C) in Austria, or the small municipality of Humppila (+3.87°C) in Finland. Global warming, as such, spares no one.

The factors driving the rise in temperature

As can be seen from the data cited above, the rise in mean temperature caused by greenhouse gases — such as CO2 and methane — that humanity produces extends across all European latitudes (and beyond), even if, as Gualdi explains, "there is no single mechanism that can explain the extraordinary rise in temperatures for every spot considered in the study. There are, instead, a series of concurrent factors, ranging from the reduced reflective power of albedo to changes in the distribution of precipitation, which in turn, by regulating soil moisture, can influence the warming of the atmosphere above."

The carbon tax can reduce CO2 emissions

For these reasons, the conviction is increasingly taking hold that a tax on carbon dioxide and on the use of fossil fuels — the so-called carbon tax — could be the most effective instrument for reducing emissions. To date, fifteen European states have adopted a tax on CO2 emissions.

Sweden applies the highest rate at €108.81 per tonne of CO2 emissions, followed by Switzerland and Liechtenstein (€90.53), while Poland and Ukraine charge as little as €0.09 and €0.37 per tonne emitted, respectively. It is also worth noting that carbon taxes can be applied independently depending on the greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases).

Each individual country decides how burdensome the tax to be applied within its borders should be, given that it can choose which greenhouse gases are subject to the tax. In Spain, for example, the carbon tax applies exclusively to fluorinated gases, covering 3 per cent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, whereas in Norway, where all greenhouse gases are included, it covers more than 60 per cent of emissions.

Emma Bonino ✓ @emmabonino

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Nessuna risorsa è gratis, nemmeno in questa fase di aspettative di grandi fondi dall'UE.
Rendere l'economia sostenibile in termini di degrado ambientale e uso delle risorse naturali richiede anzitutto che tutti noi siamo responsabilizzati.
#HeyEUTAXCO2 #StopGlobalWarming

♥ 183💬 3 23 set 2020 · Apri su X →

A petition to establish a minimum price for CO2

A group of politicians, including the radical Marco Cappato, through the instrument of the European Citizens' Initiative, which promotes participatory democracy, launched in September 2020 the petition "Stop global warming", which, addressed to the European Commission, proposes the introduction of a minimum price for CO2 emitted by all European states.

Marco Cappato @marcocappato

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Ai tempi degli accordi di Parigi sui cambiamenti climatici aveva presieduto l'Assemblea generale dell'ONU. Oggi @lykketoft invita a firmare su stopglobalwarming.eu per far pagare caro le emissioni di CO2. Perché fissare obiettivi a parole non basta. @sgw_eu #StopGlobalWarming

♥ 34💬 1 19 ott 2020 · Apri su X →

The initiative aims to establish a minimum price of 50 euros per tonne of CO2 emitted from 2020, rising to 100 euros in 2025. Added to this would be border adjustment mechanisms, whereby a tariff would be applied to products imported from the rest of the world based on their CO2 content.

"This study has an important communicative value," – concludes Silvio Gualdi – "because many people believe that an increase of 1.5/2 degrees at a global scale does not entail major changes for the planet, whereas this increase can mean that in some areas it rains instead of snowing. It can also mean that the global 2 extra degrees become 5/6 in certain localised areas, an alteration that could bring about an enormous and worrying change for all of humanity."

Given, therefore, the extraordinary rise in temperatures caused by the high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is essential to act immediately to curb this growth trend. It is therefore desirable to introduce a tax on emissions, precisely in order to discourage unsustainable behaviours driven by excessive consumption of fossil fuels.