The situation is far more alarming than the thermometer currently suggests, but it’s not hopeless, says Csaba Kőrösi, Head of the Directorate for Environmental Sustainability founded by President Áder.Continue reading
The Carpathian Basin is more exposed to the effects of climate change than most European regions, with warming reaching 1.2 degree Celsius in the past 120 years as opposed to the 1.1 C global average, the head of the Hungarian Meteorological Service (OMSZ) said in a podcast with President János Áder on Monday.
In Áder’s Blue Planet (Kék bolygó) podcast, Kornélia Radics said the pace of warming raised questions about the future of wine-growing in Hungary, and on the invasive species possibly appearing here.
Radics said global warming was speeding up, manifesting in frequent and intense changes in the weather. Hungary has seen the wettest and most arid year in a long while right after one another, she noted. While the quantity of precipitation has not changed, it now arrives over shorter times in more intense rainfalls, she said.
Besides carbon dioxide, methane and water escaping from the melting permafrost are key elements in strengthening the glasshouse effect, Radics said. Meteorologists also see changes in the global flow of oceans as a “time bomb”, she said.
Áder said climate change warrants “thinking not in 4-5 year cycles, an election cycle, but decades or even centuries ahead.” Radics added that the solutions will also have to be global, and should not stop at a country’s borders.
Featured photo illustration by Zoltán Balogh/MTI