HE climate change It is one of humanity’s most pressing problems. and this decade is crucial to moving the world towards a sustainable future. Head of Sustainability for EMEA GoogleAdam Elman, this encouraged us to use all available means to mitigate and adapt to it.
Among these tools, underlined artificial intelligence (artificial intelligence)It has great potential to process the “enormous amount of data” available on climate change and to develop early warning systems and forecasting models.
According to the Google executive, “Given the effects of the climate crisis, we need to use all available tools for both mitigation and adaptation.” reduce their own emissionsThey set themselves the goal of developing technology that will help everyone make sustainable choices.
Extreme weather events such as persistent heat waves or flooding from major stormsis becoming more common in more places, partly due to climate change, and is already food safety and the livelihoods of millions of people around the world.
Like this, Reducing CO2 emissions is imperative While accelerating adaptation to the effects of climate change in line with its results, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC for its English acronym), Elman emphasized in his statements to EFE.
Improvements to heatwave warnings
Extreme heat kills about 500,000 people a yeardeaths are on the rise, and “people frequently turn to the internet for information” to learn how to stay safe during extreme events like this (in July 2022, searches for heatwaves reached record highs worldwide).
Helping people find “accurate, timely and practical information to prepare for and adapt to these extreme weather conditions in the most affected countries” Google has launched its own overtemperature warning system in Search Enginea system that will be improved in the coming months.
After that, when users search for information about extreme heat, such as “heat wave”, they will find a banner indicating an ongoing crisis. The alert will be accompanied by information that can be very usefulsuch as information panels with news about the heat, advice, actions or local information.
When an overtemperature alert is active and they search for “weather”, for example, users will also see a highlighted link to the overtemperature feature on the weather results page.
Smart trees to cool cities
In this context, he recalled: extreme temperatures are becoming more common in cities“where concrete and infrastructure form heat islands”.
“Trees are increasingly being seen as a solution to lower street temperatures and improve quality of life. However, many cities lack the resources to put all the trees in the city where they are or are needed most. New tree planting efforts,” he complained. .
Developed to help improve this situation Tree Canopy is a tool that is part of Environmental Insights Explorer, which combines artificial intelligence and aerial imagery to provide tree canopy predictions, among other things.
This data can be used, for example, to learn what trees look like in a city and to better plan urban afforestation initiatives and tree cover in some areas.
Following pilot projects in US cities, “We are expanding the Tree Canopy tool to nearly 350 cities worldwide, including 90 cities in Europe, to help them develop their climate plans.” Already in Spain it reflects information from Barcelona, Murcia, Vitoria, Zaragoza and Calviá (Mallorca).
Most searched in Spain
Google searches show that the environment and sustainability are important to Spanish society. Between March 2022 and March 2023, the top five questions from Spain regarding climate change or global warming were: what is climate change?, what is the greenhouse effect?, what is global warming?, what can we do to prevent climate change? ? And what are the consequences of climate change?
Moreover, In 2022, searches for the terms “drought” and “heat wave” hit record highs, and searches for “forest fires” recorded the highest numbers in the past decade.
Parallel to this, concepts such as “global warming” (+120%), “green washing” (+120%), “carbon footprint” (+50%) and “climate change mitigation” (+60%) are important in Spain. recorded a growth. , according to data from technology.