Nigeria risks hurricane if global warming continues

Yemi Ogunsanya remembers with nostalgia, about 20 years ago, how his father used to park his car on the road at the popular Bar Beach, in Victoria Island, Lagos. Afterwards, they would walk on the sandy beach under coconut trees for several metres before getting to the ocean front. But today, he needs not walk that distance; the ocean is now just by the road, close enough for passers-by to see.

A professor of Climatology at the Osun State University, Osogbo, Temi Ologunorisa, describes the phenomenon of the ocean encroaching on the Bar Beach as one of the effects of climate change in Nigeria.

Climate Change, according to a United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is defined as change in the weather over a period of time due to natural causes or human activities. “Because of global warming, much of the beach is taken over,” says Mr. Ologunorisa.

Pointing at the pegs put in place by the Lagos State government to stop the advancing ocean, he adds; “Without these setbacks, this whole place would have been taken over by now.”

Mr. Ologunorisa, who is the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research at the university, explains; “As the global temperature rises, the ice caps in the polar region melt, and they go down into the ocean. This causes the volume of the Atlantic to increase.”

Hurricane remains a possibility

Stressing the importance of oceans in world climate, he says if temperatures continue to rise, there is a possibility of natural disasters like hurricanes developing even in areas which are naturally not prone to it, for example Nigeria. (Hurricanes are large tropical storms with heavy winds). “If global warming continues like this, we may not rule out the possibility of a hurricane in Nigeria in the next 30 years.”

Explaining the conditions of a hurricane, he says the condition for a hurricane to form is temperature of as high as 27 degrees centigrade.

“At the moment we record a temperature of 26 to 26.5 degrees; as you see we are approaching 27 degrees which is the condition to generate a hurricane, if global warming does not stop.”

However, another expert, Jide Ayinla, the executive director of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, thinks it might be too early to start thinking about hurricane. “We are in a very delicate situation now, so what we are doing is to reduce the level of erosion of the Bar Beach and we are still monitoring the early warning signs,” Mr. Ayinla says, adding, “But we have not found anything that a hurricane might occur soon.” Still stressing the importance of oceans, Mr. Ologunorisa says most of the big cities are located in the coastal areas and this may affect the economy. “For instance, if the sea level increases in Lagos, this will affect industries, economy, commerce of the country. And the sea level has been predicted to rise by 0.5 metres in the next 50 years,” he said.

“I know the Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research has done some studies on the Bar Beach, but this is not enough. We have many coastal areas in Nigeria – Lagos, Port Harcourt – so the government needs to fund research into this because if we don’t, it will affect us.

“Other impacts of climate change is already being felt in the country; a few are rise in incidences of diseases such as malaria, meningitis in the North, deforestation, desert encroachment and flooding.”