Just over a week after its official presentation in Monaco, the Director of Research at the Cantabria Hydraulics Institute and one of the two Spanish speakers who participated in its preparation, Íñigo Losada, presented to those attending the final event of the Naturgy Chair the conclusions of the IPCC Report on the Oceans and Cryosphere and its implications for coastal management. Prepared from almost 7,000 scientific articles, by more than a hundred researchers from around the world, the report delves into the effects of global warming on the oceans and cryosphere, such as the massive loss of glaciers, the reduction of permafrost and snowpack in high mountain systems, the increase in heat waves and phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, in addition to the rise in sea levels, which, together with the increase in temperature and acidification, can exacerbate the risks for coastal communities. Losada elaborated on some of the most notable conclusions of the report in his speech, emphasizing the need to mitigate, but also to seek adaptation to face the average rise in sea level. “If it is not mitigated, sea level will continue to rise, but we also need to take adaptation measures, because we already have the problem and there are many areas of the world that are beginning to reach their limits of adaptation to the average rise in sea level,” explained Losada, last Friday, October 4, in the lecture held in the Miralles building on the Vigo campus.
Sea level increases of up to 1.10 meters and extreme events every year in Galicia
In presenting the results of the IPCC report, Losada emphasized that “sea level, with regional differences, is rising faster than in the entire previous century”. In the specific case of Galicia, the co-author of the report warned that projections indicate that “if it is not mitigated properly, by the end of the century, it could have a value of around 80 centimeters and 1.10 meters of sea level rise. And this is a considerable change and I am only talking about average sea level, because then there are astronomical and meteorological tides and waves, which in Galicia are very important and all of this is what gives the total sea level”. In relation to the so-called extreme events, which cause floods, damage to infrastructure and the disappearance of ecosystems, these would not occur every 100 years, but every year, and in Galicia, according to the analysis carried out, “the storms that now occur at an extreme level that occur every century, around 2035-2040 would occur every year and this has tremendous implications because there will be major storms, increasing the risk to ecosystems and infrastructures”, explained Losada.
The Director of Research at the Institute of Hydraulics of Cantabria pointed out the concern that the authors of the report have caused by the verification of the acceleration of known processes in the oceans such as temperature warming, heat waves, increased precipitation and wind in cyclones or extreme wave heights. Likewise, Losada highlighted that “until now it had always been considered that the dominant factor had been volumetric expansion due to the increase in temperatures, and for the first time we are seeing that the loss of ice sheets is beginning to dominate. This is a substantial change because now we see that there are some plates in Antarctica that can play a very relevant role in increasing sea levels at the end of this century”.
Mitigate, adapt and educate
Íñigo Losada concluded his speech by appealing to the need to adapt, in addition to mitigating, to face the average rise in sea level. “The manager must understand the importance of applying joint mitigation and adaptation measures. Setting a mitigation target is easy (reducing 1.5ºC), but adaptation… What is the acceptable level of risk, for example, for people living in Vigo or for someone more vulnerable? What are the options? Will I have to build infrastructure and what infrastructure?” asked the author of the report, who also stressed the importance of citizens being educated to understand and interpret properly what this means and thus demand that their leaders take measures in this regard. “There are still discussions and everyone has their own idea about climate change and there is a component, I don’t know if it’s sentimental, that is not based at all on scientific criteria, so the more educated people are, the more criteria they will have to express their opinions”, Losada pointed out.
Xavier Labandeira, co-director of the chair, thanked, in the presentation of the event, in which the vice-rector for Social Responsibility, Internationalization and Cooperation, Maribel Doval, also participated, for Naturgy’s involvement in the chair and said that work is being done to continue the activity it has developed in recent years. At the event held last Friday, the Eva Pérez awards were also awarded to the best master’s theses of the Master’s in Sustainable Development Management. “Finally, three awards were awarded ex aequo because this 2018-2019 academic year the quality of the works was exceptionally good”, explained Pilar Piñeiro, coordinator of the master’s degree. Biology graduate Eva López Quiroga, tutored by Emilio Fernández and Gonzalo Méndez, was awarded for Proxecto Barallando: a proposal for action to promote sustainability in rural areas, in which, with the aim of promoting sustainability in rural areas, she carried out a territorial and socioeconomic analysis of the municipality of Barralla, characterizing five lines of entrepreneurship. For his part, Gabriel Alejandro González Reyes, tutored by Juan Añel and Jordi Vich, was awarded for the work Life cycle analyses of lubricating oils used in the renewable energy industry, which aims to evaluate, quantify and compare the use during the useful life of the different types of lubricating oils used by the company Naturgy, carrying out a life cycle analysis from an environmental and economic point of view. The third prize winner in the seventh edition of the awards was Pedro Miranda Varela for Proposal for the improvement of the urban waste collection and management service in the municipality of Monforte de Lemos, in which, tutored by Pilar Piñeiro, he presents two options for developing a strategy for the differentiated management of biowaste.
After Íñigo Losada’s presentation, the workshop ended with a round table on the effects of climate change on the oceans and the cryosphere, in which, in addition to the author of the IPCC report, teachers and researchers from the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo Elena Ojea and Móncho Gómez Gesteira participated.
Source: DUVI
