Opinion

Powerful El Nino which occurred in the Pacific has inflicted damage worldwide.

Now extreme heat waves and high temperatures are persisting and flood keeps occurring owing to drought and downpour around the world.

On August 4 the World Meteorological Organization announced that this year's summer is an "extreme summer" doing serious damage to human health and environment.

A spokesperson for the WMO at a news briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, said that many meteorological observatories in the world observed record-breaking temperatures in July and that winter heat waves swept different parts of South America even in early August.

Earlier, the WMO announced through updated data related to extreme weather that the highest daytime and nighttime temperatures were observed in France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Algeria, Tunisia and other countries.

A powerful heat wave hit many parts of the US.

According to data available, the sea-surface temperature of the Mediterranean is expected to particularly rise in the coming several days or weeks, exceeding 30°C in some waters, and surface temperatures of many waters of the western Mediterranean to rise by over 4°C above the average.

Fatal natural disasters include the heat waves taking thousands of lives every year, the WMO said, adding that the consequences of heat waves on the sea include the migration and extinction of animals.

The WMO stressed that Canada is undergoing the worst-ever wildfire season and that heavy rain and flood, too, are causing huge human and material losses in many parts of the world.

Saying that extreme weather, which more frequently occurs owing to global warming, has a great impact on human health, ecosystems, economy, agriculture, energy and water supply, the secretary-general of the WMO noted that it means that it is a more urgent task to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, there is growing concern that El Nino will lead to global energy and food shortages and supply chain disruption.

India has limited food exports amidst the crescendo of fear that the global food production will decline and food prices skyrocket due to El Nino.

El Nino, which occurs every several years, would raise the global crude oil prices by more than 3%.

Media expressed concern that this year's El Nino will cause new losses to the unfortunately weak global economic growth.

El Nino of four years ago reportedly entailed a decline in GDP of many countries.

Scholars asserted that though El Nino in 1997-1998 reduced the global total output value in a record-breaking way for five years afterwards, the decline in the total output value due to El Nino this time is likely to be over 14.7 times larger than that.

Meanwhile, there are assertions that while the northern hemisphere is suffering from record-breaking intense heat, the sultry weather next year is highly likely to worsen owing to El Nino.

The reality requires that all countries make more positive efforts to ensure energy and food security by their own efforts and to develop the economy in a stable way while trying to minimize damage caused by disastrous abnormal climate.