PANAJI: A Goan model of Portuguese descent, Pearl Angel D’souza will represent India at the Global Climate Change Action Forum – an international platform for young minds to discuss and deliberate on Climate Change-related issues and activities As reported earlier she will also be honoured by a Lisbon, Portugal-based non governmental organisation (NGO), People for Underprivileged People or PUP for her active help in the slums of Dharavi and Govandi in Mumbai. More details are awaited and we will keep you posted on the award to be presented to her on an international platform.

D’souza whose family originally hails from Navelim in South Goa, is of Portuguese descent, but shifted to Mumbai when she was barely a year-old. She studied in Mumbai and took up work with a media organisation, before getting into acting and modelling.

Now, the 31-year-old besides pursuing her acting and modelling career in Mumbai, is very actively involved in social work, providing free tuition to street kids and kids living in slum pockets.

Pearl who is a big fan of the popular reality show on Colors – Bigg Boss, hosted by Salman Khan wants to continue both – her acting profession as well as her social activities for which she devotes 4-5 hours daily.

She has done a few web series for OTT (Over The Top) platforms and even featured in some ad films. She did a cameo role in the Maneesh Singh-directed film Green Terror. Besides, she has done dozens of print ad and catalogue shoots, but focused on social work during the Covid pandemic, as other avenues were shut during the lock down. She is very actively involved in Climate Change activism in India and particularly in Mumbai and Goa.

NEW DELHI: According to a report on the global impact of Climate Change by the CPIE India, peak summer temperatures in various coastal regions of India, including Goa, could rise by 2-4 degrees C (from the present levels) causing a range of catastrophic events that could greatly impact the oceans, cause widespread flooding and destroy the flora and fauna and piscine and aquatic life in rivers, ponds lakes, other water bodies in the region.

Climate change will lead to many more very hot days in the summer and fewer very cold days in the winter. In some areas like Mumbai, winters will disappear.

Higher growth in greenhouse gas emission volumes would cause more frequent and severe temperature extremes. Globally, cold waves have decreased in frequency and in cities like Mumbai, there are hardly 3-5 days in winter when it’s really cold. The higher intensity and severity of individual heat waves can often be attributed to global warming.

Temperature spikes must slow down if we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, say climate scientists. Global warming needs to be kept to 1.5C at the maximum by 2100 or else the consequences could be disastrous for our planet.

Scientific estimates based on present mathematical models claim global warming could exceed 4C in the future, leading to devastating heatwaves, millions losing their homes to rising sea levels, and the irreversible loss of plant and animal species across the world.

Several parts of Goa (and Mumbai), it’s beaches, fields and other low-lying areas could be under water by the turn of this century if global warming levels continue to rise. Beaches like those of Candolim and Baga will be initially eroded by sand erosion caused by devastating floods (caused by climatic variations) and whatever is left of the eroded beaches would be inundated by rising sea levels which would be in the range of 2 to 6 meters.

Extreme weather events like continuous floods and long heat waves of 10 to 12 days at a stretch are already more intense across the globe, threatening lives and livelihoods with devastation.

With further warming, some regions could become uninhabitable, as farmland turns into desert or gets inundated with saline sea waters. East Africa has seen several repetitive seasons of failed rains, which the UN’s World Food Programme says has put up to 22 million people at risk of severe hunger due to vegetable and food grain shortage and in the peril of death.

Extreme temperatures can also increase the risk of wildfires – as seen in Europe and the Americas. France and Germany recorded about seven times more land burnt between January and the middle of July 2022, compared with the average in the years earlier. Goa too has seen several forest fires with the frequency and intensity increasing annually.

Hotter temperatures also mean that previously frozen ground covered in layers of ice, will melt in places like Siberia, releasing greenhouse gases trapped for centuries into the atmosphere, further worsening climate change.

In other regions, extremely heavy rainfall caused historic, unprecedented flooding – as was seen in China, Pakistan and Nigeria.

People living in poorer and developing countries are expected to suffer the most as they have fewer resources to adapt to climate change, the report says.

LONDON: The recent collapse of a over 1,100km2 ice shelf in East Antarctica came at a time of record high temperatures and is a clear symptom of a planet in climate crisis, experts say.

It seems the Antarctic region is warmer by about 35 to 40 °C this year and getting warmer as the months go by.

The Conger ice shelf, which cleaved away from the eastern side of Antarctica in March, is the latest victim of rising temperatures at the Earth’s poles.

Experts say as the polar regions warm, more ice is likely to melt, potentially pushing up sea levels and inundating coastal communities.

“The current concentration of greenhouse gases is higher than at any time in human history. It’s a very worrying signal,” said Pascal Peduzzi, Director of the Global Resource Information Database (GRID) – Geneva. GRID-Geneva is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and the University of Geneva.

Satellite imagery, which dates back five decades, shows sea ice at both poles is in retreat. On February 21, 2022, Antarctic sea ice, which has until recently been stable, reached its minimum since measurements began in 1979.

The situation is much more dramatic at the opposite side of the planet. Forty years ago sea ice in the Arctic was typically three to four meters thick. Today, it is around 1.5 metres, according to a recent UNEP report, the Foresight Brief.

Thinner ice and more open water lead to increased absorption of sunlight and increased melting in summer. Since 1979 around 50 per cent of summer sea ice coverage has been lost.

“There has been a significant sea ice loss, especially in the last 20 years,” said Tore Furevik, a Director at the Nansen Environment and Remote Sensing Centre and a co-author of the Foresights Brief. “Sea ice loss indicates a climate that is getting warmer and warmer and is not in balance, The only way to stop this trend is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The temperature at Vostok Weather Station in the central part of Antarctica in March normally averages -53°C. But between March 16 and March 20, around the time the ice shelf is believed to have collapsed, the temperature was on average 35°C warmer, hitting a balmy-for-Antarctica -18°C on March 17. The heat wave is part of a warming trend being recorded globally.