Greenland, record breakup in 2019. And Europe will pay billions of euros for raising the Mediterranean

THE'Arctic it melts and every square meter of ice that becomes water and floods it will cost us money. A 2018 study from Joint Research Center, a specialized agency of the European Commission. Published in Nature and so far gone unnoticed, it now takes on dramatic relevance. This year the cap of the Greenland will record a record breakup, beating that of 2012. "The confirmation will arrive at the end of the year," he announced Xavier Fettweis, researcher at the Department of Geography of the Belgian University of Liege, one of the leading meteorological modeling experts in theArctic. "But we can already say that from 1 September 2018 to 31 August 2019 the total mass of ice has reduced to 67 gigatonnnellate, against 75 measured in the same reference period in 2011-2012". This is equivalent to 1.4 mm more water at sea, the higher amount poured from the Greenland from 1950 to today. Accomplice to the phenomenon was the exceptional summer heat which, starting fromEurope, hit the extreme North, accelerating the liquefaction of Arctic ice.

The long-term boomerang effect will help inflict huge damage to the coastal countries of Old World. The Joint Research Center quantified them. In the worst scenario hypothesized in the analysis, by the end of the century the rising of the seas will come to cost 2.5 trillion euros (2.5 billion billion). After UK, France and Norway, Italy will be the fourth most damaged country. We could spend about 440 million euros in 2020 alone, almost 10 billion in 2050 and over 236 billion in 2100. And the high bill for raising the Mediterranean which, according to the latest ENEA study, will increase by one meter by 2100, exposing an area as extensive as the Liguria.

In the same three periods English, French and Norwegian they will lose up to 1.8, 30, 594 billion, 0.8, 20, 485 billion and 0.2, 15, 244 billion euros respectively. The countries that will fare better are Malta, Holland e Bulgaria that, together, in 2100 they will come to pay a total of just over 2 billion euros. "In the short term, rising sea levels will be caused mainly byexpansion of water mass, due to the global increase in water temperatures. From 2050 the contribution of melting ice (polar and mountain) will become relatively more significant, "he explains Michalis Vousdoukas, one of the authors of the study. "The cause-effect relationship between the dissolution of the ice and the financial consequences are undoubted but not linear: a slight increase in the water level may not have a great impact, but its own progressive accumulation will have serious consequences, combining with the high tides and the weather adversities (hurricanes and storms) that will become more and more frequent ”.

Most of the European coastal areas, which extend for more than 100 thousand kilometers, are densely populated and rich in infrastructure of high value, and therefore financially very vulnerable to flooding. Based on the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the European Environmental Agency for estimated that the rise of the seas into Europe will be similar to the world average. By the end of the 21st century the increase will probably be 0.28-0.61 or 0.52-0.98 meters compared to the period 1986-2005, considering respectively a low or high level of emissions of CO2 (or greenhouse gases) produced by humans that contribute to the global warming. These forecasts will be reviewed at the end of 2019, in line with the special report on climate, oceans and ice change that the IPCC will present at the end of September.

The experts of EU research center have managed to convert scientific predictions on the dissolution of ice and the increase in sea levels in economic projections. In the absence of further investments in coastal protection, it is estimated that annual losses, which today do not exceed 1.25 billion euros, will increase to a threshold of between 93 and 961 billion euros. This margin of variability depends on several socio-economic scenarios where the use of fossil fuels (which release CO2) will remain stable or reduce, in a more or less uniform way, to a planetary level.

According to these same scenarios, by 2050 and 2100 le devastations will erode 0.06-0.09 and 0.29-0.86 percent respectively of the European GDP, compared to the current average level, at around 0.01 percent. The annual number of people affected by coastal floods will increase from the current 102 thousand to 1.52-3.65 million by the end of the century (also in this case in the absence of further adaptation measures and depending on the different socio-economic trends). All these figures are intended for rear further if the worst of the scenarios outlined by the researchers came true.

There Greenland plays a central role in this eco-financial crisis. The melting of its ice cream mantle is the third largest responsible for the global rise of the seas, positioning itself after the thermal expansion of the waters and the fusion of the mountain glaciers. Its mass loss has increased sixfold since the 1980s, increasing sea levels by 13.7 mm since 1972, half of which in the last 8 years alone. And on one dissolution record by 2019 almost all scientists are betting on us, first of all Jason Box, professor of glaciology at the Danish-Greenland Geological Commission, which had already predicted it in the spring with its monitoring network promice. "The poor snowfall of last winter has left the darker ice uncovered which has a low level of refraction and absorbs greater quantities of solar energy, triggering the fusion of the underlying layers, "he explains Box. If all the ice of the Greenland melt, the seas would grow by 7 meters. However, this would take millennia, even with a temperature increase of 2 ° C compared to pre-industrial levels. This is the critical threshold that i governments they have pledged not to exceed with the signature of the Paris agreements of 2016 that, in the face apocalypse Greenlander, it already looks like waste paper.

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