Africa’s melting glaciers fuel drought worries

Africa’s melting glaciers fuel drought worries

Subject – Environment

Context – Africa’s melting glaciers fuel drought worries

Concept –

• Africa’s fabled eastern glaciers will vanish in two decades, 118 million poor people face drought, floods or extreme heat, and climate change could shrink the continent’s economy by 3 per cent by mid-century, the UN climate agency warned.
• The latest report on the state of Africa’s climate by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and African Union agencies paints a dire picture of the continent’s ability to adapt to increasingly frequent weather disasters.
  • The report has been jointly published by the WMO, the African Union Commission and the Economic Commission for Africa through the Africa Climate Policy Centre, international and regional scientific organizations and United Nations agencies.
• The report says last year was Africa’s third warmest on record, according to one set of data, 0.86 degrees Celsius above the average in the three decades leading to 2010.
  • It has mostly warmed slower than high-latitude temperate zones, but the impact is still devastating.
• The report came as African countries demanded a new system to track funding from wealthy nations that are failing to meet a $100-billion annual target to help the developing world tackle climate change
• The report forecast that at current rates all three of Africa’s tropical ice fields —Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro, Kenya’s Mount Kenya, and Uganda’s Rwenzoris, which are often identified as the location of the legendary Mountains of the Moon — would be gone by the 2040s.
  • Mt Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, lies on the Equator. Its summit is, however, snowbound throughout the year.
  • The snow on Mt Kenya, the second-highest peak in Africa after Kilimanjaro, could disappear as soon as 2030, according to the report.
    • It will be one of the first peaks in the world to lose its glaciers to anthropogenic climate change, the report warned.
  • The continent has surpassed the world on worrying indicators, according to the report.
    • It has warmed faster than the global average temperature over land and ocean combined. The period 1991-2020 was warmer than for the 1961-1990 period in all African sub regions. It was significantly higher than the warming during 1931-1960.
    • The year 2020 ranked between the third and eighth warmest year on record for Africa according to the report. These findings resonate with those of IPCC’s most recent assessment.
    • At least one out of every tenth person displaced in 2020 was in the East and Horn of Africa region.
    • By 2030, up to 118 million extremely poor people on the continent will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat. This will affect progress towards poverty alleviation and growth, according to the report.