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65 Algerians Killed in Wild Fires, Some of Which Declared as Arsons

August 11, 2021

Algerian young men trying to put off wild fires with tree branches, August 11, 2021

 

Algeria forest fires: At least 65 people killed as fires spread

BBC, August 11, 2021

Wildfires tearing through northern Algeria have now killed at least 65 people, including 28 soldiers deployed to help the firefighters.

The blazes in the mountainous Kabylie region are some of the worst in the country's history. Officials have blamed arson for many of them.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has declared three days of national mourning for the victims.

A total of 69 fires were burning on Wednesday, amid a heatwave sweeping across North Africa. The flames have been fanned by strong winds and tinder-dry conditions.

In the worst-affected district of Tizi Ouzou, residents have fled and many homes have been destroyed. Many of the victims live in remote villages.

Several people have been arrested on suspicion of starting fires, but officials gave no details.

Emergency services have been overstretched and Algeria is nearing a deal with European partners to rent firefighting planes.

On Facebook, there have been calls for volunteer doctors to provide support.

The heatwave is expected to continue across North Africa until the end of the week, with temperatures in Algeria reaching 46C (115F).

Fires have caused devastation in several Mediterranean countries in recent days, including Turkey, Greece, Lebanon and Cyprus.

The fires come as the UN released a major report stating that the effects of climate change are even more severe than previously thought.

The report warned that increasingly severe weather patterns that can fuel wildfires, such as heatwaves and droughts, will become more common if action is not taken soon.

Algeria forest fires: At least 65 people killed as fires spread - BBC News

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Algeria wildfires: At least 65 people killed as blazes ravage forests and villages east of the capital

The dead include soldiers who were killed saving residents from wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of the capital, Algiers.

Sky News, Wednesday 11 August 2021 13:31, UK

At least 65 people have been killed in wildfires that erupted in Algeria, according to state television reports.

Officials said the number included 25 soldiers killed trying to save residents.

The fires have been ravaging forests and villages east of the capital, Algiers, in the Kabyle region, covering the mountainous area with thick clouds of smoke.

Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane told state television the blazes appeared to be "highly synchronised", adding that "leads one to believe these were criminal acts".

He called on the international community to help and said the government was in talks with partners to hire planes to extinguish fires. The region has no water-dumping aircraft.

Firefighters and the army are still trying to contain the blazes.

Algeria's President Abdul-Madjid Tebboune said on Twitter that soldiers have saved more than 100 citizens from the blazes in the two areas of the mountainous region.

The Kabyle region, which is situated 60 miles (100km) east of Algeria's capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages.

Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools.

The deaths and injuries occurred around Kabyle's capital of Tizi-Ouzou, which is flanked by mountains and in Bejaia, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, the president said.

Earlier, interior minister Kamel Beldjoud travelled to Kabyle to assess the situation and also blamed the fires there on arson.

"Only criminal hands can be behind the simultaneous outbreak of about 50 fires across several localities," he said, although no arrests have been announced.

He said the priority was to avoid more victims and vowed to compensate those affected.

A 92-year-old woman who lives in the Kabyle mountain village of Ait Saada said on Monday night the scene looked like "the end of the world".

"We were afraid," Fatima Aoudia said.

"The entire hill was transformed into a giant blaze."

She compared the scene to bombings by French troops during Algeria's independence war, which ended in 1962.

"These burned down forests. It's a part of me that is gone," she said.

"It's a drama for humanity, for nature. It's a disaster."

Last week, a European Union atmosphere monitor said the Mediterranean had become a wildfire hotspot as massive blazes engulfed forests in Turkey and Greece, aided by a heatwave.

Algeria wildfires: At least 65 people killed as blazes ravage forests and villages east of the capital | World News | Sky News

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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

By Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent

BBC, August 9, 2021

Human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways, a major UN scientific report has said.

The landmark study warns of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, and a key temperature limit being broken in just over a decade.

The report "is a code red for humanity", says the UN chief.

But scientists say a catastrophe can be avoided if the world acts fast.

There is hope that deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures.

Echoing the scientists' findings, UN Secretary General António Guterres said: "If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today's report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses. I count on government leaders and all stakeholders to ensure COP26 is a success."

The sober assessment of our planet's future has been delivered by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of scientists whose findings are endorsed by the world's governments.

Their report is the first major review of the science of climate change since 2013. Its release comes less than three months before a key climate summit in Glasgow known as COP26.

In strong, confident tones, the IPCC's document says "it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land".

According to Prof Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, UK, and one of the report's authors, the scientists cannot be any clearer on this point.

"It is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet."

Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, said: "By using sports terms, one could say the atmosphere has been exposed to doping, which means we have begun observing extremes more often than before."

The authors say that since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years.

This warming is "already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe".

Whether it's heatwaves like the ones recently experienced in Greece and western North America, or floods like those in Germany and China, "their attribution to human influence has strengthened" over the past decade.

IPCC report key points

Global surface temperature was 1.09C higher in the decade between 2011-2020 than between 1850-1900. The past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850 The recent rate of sea level rise has nearly tripled compared with 1901-1971 Human influence is "very likely" (90%) the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea-ice It is "virtually certain" that hot extremes including heatwaves have become more frequent and more intense since the 1950s, while cold events have become less frequent and less severe

The new report also makes clear that the warming we've experienced to date has made changes to many of our planetary support systems that are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia.

The oceans will continue to warm and become more acidic. Mountain and polar glaciers will continue melting for decades or centuries.

"The consequences will continue to get worse for every bit of warming," said Prof Hawkins.

"And for many of these consequences, there's no going back."

When it comes to sea level rise, the scientists have modelled a likely range for different levels of emissions.

However, a rise of around 2m by the end of this century cannot be ruled out - and neither can a 5m rise by 2150.

Such outcomes, while unlikely, would threaten many millions more people in coastal areas with flooding by 2100.

One key aspect of the report is the expected rate of temperature rise and what it means for the safety of humanity.

Almost every nation on Earth signed up to the goals of the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C.

This new report says that under all the emissions scenarios considered by the scientists, both targets will be broken this century unless huge cuts in carbon take place.

NASA Can temperature rise be kept below 1.5°C?

1.1°CThe increase in temperature since pre-industrial times

2,400bn tonnesCO2 humans have emitted to date

500bn tonnesmore would leave only a 50-50 chance of staying under 1.5°C

40bn tonnes Roughly amount of CO2 humanity emits every year

Source: IPCC

The authors believe that 1.5C will be reached by 2040 in all scenarios. If emissions aren't slashed in the next few years, this will happen even earlier.

This was predicted in the IPCC's special report on 1.5C in 2018 and this new study now confirms it.

"We will hit one-and-a-half degrees in individual years much earlier. We already hit it in two months during the El Niño in 2016," said Prof Malte Meinshausen, an IPCC author from the University of Melbourne in Australia.

"The new report's best estimate is the middle of 2034, but the uncertainty is huge and ranges between now and never."

The consequences of going past 1.5C over a period of years would be unwelcome in a world that has already experienced a rapid uptick in extreme events with a temperature rise since pre-industrial times of 1.1C.

"We will see even more intense and more frequent heatwaves," said Dr Friederike Otto, from the University of Oxford, UK, and one of the IPCC report's authors.

"And we will also see an increase in heavy rainfall events on a global scale, and also increases in some types of droughts in some regions of the world."

media captionSea levels will continue to rise for centuries, warns climate scientist Prof Ed Hawkins.

Prof Carolina Vera, vice-chair of the working group that produced the document, said: "The report clearly shows that we are already living the consequences of climate change everywhere. But we will experience further and concurrent changes that increase with every additional beat of warming."

So what can be done?

While this report is more clear and confident about the downsides to warming, the scientists are more hopeful that if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, we can halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures.

Reaching net zero involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible using clean technology, then burying any remaining releases using carbon capture and storage, or absorbing them by planting trees.

"The thought before was that we could get increasing temperatures even after net zero," said another co-author, Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, UK.

"But we now expect nature to be kind to us and if we are able to achieve net zero, we hopefully won't get any further temperature increase; and if we are able to achieve net zero greenhouse gases, we should eventually be able to reverse some of that temperature increase and get some cooling."

Five future impacts

Temperatures will reach 1.5C above 1850-1900 levels by 2040 under all emissions scenarios The Arctic is likely to be practically ice-free in September at least once before 2050 in all scenarios assessed There will be an increasing occurrence of some extreme events "unprecedented in the historical record" even at warming of 1.5C Extreme sea level events that occurred once a century in the recent past are projected to occur at least annually at more than half of tidal gauge locations by 2100 There will be likely increases in fire weather in many regions

While the future projections of warming are clearer than ever in this report, and many impacts simply cannot be avoided, the authors caution against fatalism.

"Lowering global warming really minimises the likelihood of hitting these tipping points," said Dr Otto. "We are not doomed."

A tipping point refers to when part of the Earth's climate system undergoes an abrupt change in response to continued warming.

For political leaders, the report is another in a long line of wake-up calls, but since it comes so close to November's COP26 global climate summit, it carries extra weight.

Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity' - BBC News 

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