AFP

Searing summer temperatures in the UK have not just parched the earth and dried up rivers, lakes and reservoirs but are also seeing trees shed their leaves early.

Instead of green, many gardens, parks and woods are now a sea of orange, yellow, red and brown, with thick carpets of leaves on the ground.

The early leaf fall — dubbed a “false autumn” — is a sign of stress, as trees shed their leaves to try to retain moisture.

But experts say while older trees with deep roots can withstand the drier conditions, younger, less established ones could be at risk.

“The trees are enacting the hormones they use in autumn to just retract and ensure their survival,” said Rosie Walker, of the Woodland Trust conservation charity.

“They’ll keep going like this for a few years but it is going to start impacting our trees if we’re not very careful,” she told BBC radio.

Temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in Britain in July, with the month the driest on record in many parts of southern and eastern England.

Climate change has been blamed for the searing heatwave, which has led to drought being declared and a ban on the use of hosepipes to save water in some areas.

The Woodland Trust said fallen leaves are most likely to come from birch, silver birch and rowan trees.

“We saw the first turn in silver birch on August 12, which is incredibly early,” said Walker, adding that other species were also shedding their leaves.

The Trust meanwhile said it recorded its earliest ever appearance of ripe wild blackberries — normally an autumn fruit — on June 28.

That, and the premature ripening of other berries and nuts, could hit wildlife such as small mammals and birds who store energy in September and October for the cold winter months.

Animals such as dormice consume high-fat foods such as hazelnuts and other hedgerow fruits in autumn but could struggle if they are gone by August.

Steve Hussey, from the Devon Wildlife Trust in southwest England, said: “Nature’s timing is everything for our wildlife.

“The climate crisis is bringing with it seasonal weather patterns which our wildlife is just not adapted to.

“Our long, hot summer and the ‘false autumn’ will have a knock-on for many species right into the real autumn months and beyond.”

Germany on Wednesday inaugurated a railway line powered entirely by hydrogen, a “world premiere” and a major step forward for green train transport despite nagging supply challenges.

A fleet of 14 trains provided by French industrial giant Alstom to the German state Lower Saxony has replaced diesel locomotives on the 100 kilometres (60 miles) of track connecting the cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervoerde and Buxtehude near Hamburg.

“We are very proud to put this technology into operation together with our strong partners as a world premiere,” Alstom CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge said in a statement.

Hydrogen trains have become a promising way to decarbonise the rail sector and replace climate-warming diesel, which still powers 20 percent of journeys in Germany.

Billed as a “zero emission” mode of transport, the trains mix hydrogen on board with oxygen present in the ambient air, thanks to a fuel cell installed in the roof. This produces the electricity needed to pull the train.

Regional rail operator LNVG said the fleet, which cost 93 million euros (dollars), would prevent 4,400 tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere each year.

– Run for its money –

Designed in the southern French town of Tarbes and assembled in Salzgitter in central Germany, Alstom’s trains — called Coradia iLint — are trailblazers in the sector.

The project created jobs for up to 80 employees in the two countries, according to Alstom. 

Commercial trials have been carried out since 2018 on the line with two hydrogen trains but now the entire fleet is adopting the groundbreaking technology.

The French group has inked four contracts for several dozen trains between Germany, France and Italy, with no sign of demand waning. 

In Germany alone “between 2,500 and 3,000 diesel trains could be replaced by hydrogen models”, Stefan Schrank, project manager at Alstom, told AFP.

“By 2035, around 15 to 20 percent of the regional European market could run on hydrogen,” according to Alexandre Charpentier, a rail expert at consultancy Roland Berger.

Hydrogen trains are particularly attractive on short regional lines where the cost of a transition to electric outstrips the profitability of the route. 

Currently, around one out of two regional trains in Europe runs on diesel.

But Alstom’s competitors are ready to give it a run for its money. German behemoth Siemens unveiled a prototype hydrogen train with national rail company Deutsche Bahn in May, with a view to a roll-out in 2024.

But, despite the attractive prospects, “there are real barriers” to a big expansion with hydrogen, Charpentier said.

For starters, trains are not the only means of transport hungry for the fuel.

The entire sector, whether it be road vehicles or aircraft, not to mention heavy industry such as steel and chemicals, is eyeing hydrogen to slash CO2 emissions.

– Colossal investment –

Although Germany announced in 2020 an ambitious seven-billion-euro plan to become a leader in hydrogen technologies within a decade, the infrastructure is still lacking in Europe’s top economy.

It is a problem seen across the continent, where colossal investment would be needed for a real shift to hydrogen.

“For this reason, we do not foresee a 100-percent replacement of diesel trains with hydrogen,” Charpentier said.

Furthermore, hydrogen is not necessarily carbon-free: only “green hydrogen”, produced using renewable energy, is considered sustainable by experts. 

Other, more common manufacturing methods exist, but they emit greenhouse gases because they are made from fossil fuels. 

The Lower Saxony line will in the beginning have to use a hydrogen by-product of certain industries such as the chemical sector.

The French research institute IFP specialising in energy issues says that hydrogen is currently “95 percent derived from the transformation of fossil fuels, almost half of which come from natural gas”. 

Europe’s enduring reliance on gas from Russia amid massive tensions over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine poses major challenges for the development of hydrogen in rail transport.

“Political leaders will have to decide which sector to prioritise when determining what the production of hydrogen will or won’t go to,” Charpentier said. 

Germany will also have to import massively to meet its needs. 

Partnerships have recently been signed with India and Morocco, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz sealed a green hydrogen deal with Canada on a visit this week, laying a path for a transatlantic supply chain.

The lights are out along a once-bustling boulevard in a tourist spot at the epicentre of China’s hottest summer on record, as people take refuge indoors from the searing heat engulfing the country’s southwest.

The region is suffering through its longest continuous period of high temperatures since records began more than 60 years ago, with scientists warning such hot and dry spells will worsen as climate change warms the planet.

Temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) have forced authorities to impose power cuts to cope with a surge in demand for electricity partly driven by people cranking up the air conditioning.

On the streets of Chongqing, a city of 30 million, locals line up for mandatory Covid tests in the wee hours of the morning, keen to avoid long queues in the scorching heat of the day.

One woman told AFP she took shelter in a local ballroom during the day — a spot particularly busy as the elderly seek shelter from the sun and while away the hours dancing under a dimmed light.

The power shortages have now forced locals to scale back their use of air conditioning, making life a struggle.

“Since the heatwave, I feel too hot to sleep every night, and the heat wakes me up every morning,” Xu Jinxin, a 20-year-old student, told AFP.

“Because of the electricity shortage, we don’t leave the AC on all day,” he said. 

“We’re trying to use less and save more, trying to use fans if we can, and life goes on with some endurance.”

At Chongqing’s most popular tourist spot along the Jialing River, the lights have been cut to save power and the once-busy street has gone quiet.

Locals bathe in what water remains in the dried-out riverbed and pose for photos.

The Jialing is a tributary of the mighty Yangtze — a key node for southwestern China’s trade that is now drying up, with water flow on its main trunk about 50 percent lower than the average over the last five years.

Local businesses — already hit hard by two years of Covid-19 — are suffering, with one bar worker saying the power shortages had affected nightlife.

“Most of the equipment like the ice-maker and the lighting in the bar are high-power machines, and the recent electricity shortage has compelled the bar to suspend business,” Liu, a singer, told AFP. 

“This affects my work and my life as well.”

Even the taps are running hot.

“In previous summers when we turned on the faucet, we might get hot water flowing for one minute, and cool water after that,” said Zhang, a 25-year-old woman who did not give her first name.

“This year, even after two or three minutes, it still feels like boiling water.”

burs-oho/mca/axn

Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan’s climate change minister said Wednesday, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

Heavy rain continued to pound much of Pakistan Wednesday, with authorities reporting more than a dozen deaths — including nine children — in the last 24 hours.

“It has been raining for a month now. There is nothing left,” a woman named Khanzadi told AFP in badly hit Jaffarabad, Balochistan province.

“We had only one goat, that too drowned in the flood… Now we have nothing with us and we are lying along the road and facing hunger.”

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said authorities would launch an appeal for international help once an assessment was complete.

“Given the scale of the disaster there is no question of the provinces, or even Islamabad, being able to cope with this magnitude of climate catastrophe on their own,” she told AFP. 

“Lives are at risk, thousands homeless. It is important that international partners mobilise assistance.”

Pakistan is eighth on a list of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch.

– From heatwave to flood –

Earlier this year much of the nation was in the grip of a heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad, Sindh province.

The city is now grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges.

In Sukkur, about 75 kilometres (50 miles) away, volunteers were using boats along the flooded streets of the city to distribute food and fresh water to people trapped in their homes. 

Zaheer Ahmad Babar, a senior met office official, told AFP that this year’s rains were the heaviest since 2010, when over 2,000 people died and more than two million were displaced by monsoon floods that covered nearly a fifth of the country.

Rainfall in Balochistan province was 430 percent higher than normal, he said, while Sindh was nearing 500 percent.

The town of Padidan in Sindh had received over a metre (39 inches) of rain since August 1, he added.

“It is a climate catastrophe of epic scale,” Rehman said, adding three million people had been affected.

The National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that nearly 125,000 homes had been destroyed and 288,000 more were damaged by the floods.

Some 700,000 livestock in Sindh and Balochistan had been killed, and nearly two million acres of farmland destroyed, officials added.

Nearly 3,000 kilometres of roads had also been damaged.