The eyes of much of the world will be on the Brazilian city of Belem for the weeks to come as the COP30 conference gets underway on Monday.

However, the event’s validity has been thrown into doubt by the fact that the leaders of the USA, China, and India will not be in attendance and with it the countries which are responsible for almost half the world emissions.

The Global South have arrived ready to push the need for the developed nations to put their hands in the pockets to support their efforts not only to transition to a net zero future but also fight the current impacts of a changing climate.

The USA has made it clear they are withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change and is heavily investing in its fossil fuel industry so any pleas is likely to cut no ice in Washington.

However it comes as the World Weather Attribution Service has issued its latest research on Hurricane Melissa.

It makes it clear the hurricane, the most powerful to hit Jamacia since records began was fuelled by climate change.

It stated: “While it will likely take weeks to fully assess the extent of the damage, it is already clear that Melissa led to widespread destruction and severe disruption to critical infrastructure, including washed-out roads, damaged water systems, power outages, and communication failures.”

It acknowledged that the influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is more complex compared to other types of extreme weather events as impacts are driven by both heavy rainfall and extreme winds. In addition, the surrounding conditions, in particular the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, are crucial for the formation of hurricanes.

The organisation added: “To estimate if human-induced climate change influenced the heavy rainfall, we first determine if there is a trend in the observations. In Jamaica, we find that heavy 5-day rainfall events such as the one associated with Melissa are about 30% more intense and about twice as likely in today’s climate, that is 1.3°C warmer than it would have been without human-induced climate change. In Eastern Cuba the observations show an even stronger increase of about 50% in intensity and a factor 9 in frequency.”

It concluded: “Taking all lines of evidence together, including the observations, the IRIS analysis, other studies in the region, and physical reasoning, that in a warming climate an increase in heavy rainfall is expected, we estimate an increase in intensity of the rainfall associated with hurricanes like Melissa to be larger than 9%.”

COP30 will debate a wide range of issues in the two weeks to come but for millions around the world the risks are all too real.

Jon Guy,

Editor, Emerging Risks