The Asian Floods—Signs of Climate Catastrophes to Come?

[SpArK]

The Asian Floods—Signs of Climate Catastrophes to Come?​

Posted by BRYAN WALSH

They haven't gotten anywhere near the attention they deserve, but the floods that have struck much of Asia over the past couple of weeks may be the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent memory—bigger even than the earthquake that hit Haiti in January and the 2004 Asian tsunami. Both of those catastrophes killed far more, but the floods have affected 13 million people in Pakistan alone, and parts of India, China and North Korea have also suffered from the rains. The floods will destroy homes and business, wreck agriculture and destroy infrastructure, leave disease and disability in their wake. Flooding in China has already killed more than 1,100 people this year and caused tens of billions of dollars of damage. In shaky Pakistan, where the public has been enraged by the government's typically fumbling response to the flood, it could even increase support for hard-line Islamic groups.


As governments and charities grapple with the extent of the floods, the question arises, as it does every time there is a major weather event like this one: was this disaster truly natural, or is it connected in some way to climate change? Now it's important to remember that major floods have been happening in this part of the world since well before humans began worrying about the impacts of global warming. And the massive number of people affected by these floods—or for that matter, the sky-high death tolls of the Haiti quake and the Asian tsunami—have as much to do with the growing number of people living in high-risk areas like the coast, earthquake zones and flood plains as it does with the strength of a storm or a temblor. The Haiti quake killed as many as 300,000 people, but at a magnitude of 7.0, it was slightly weaker than the 1989 Bay Area temblor that killed 62 people—the difference was Haiti's population density, poverty and complete lack of earthquake building codes.

Still, the unrelenting rains that have produced the Asian flood is the sort of extreme weather that is likely to become more common with climate change, as Alister Doyle points out for Reuters:

This year is on track to be the warmest since reliable temperature records began in the mid-19th century, beating 1998, mainly due to a build-up of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

"We will always have climate extremes. But it looks like climate change is exacerbating the intensity of the extremes," said Omar Baddour, chief of climate data management applications at WMO headquarters in Geneva.

The reinsurer Munich Re reported last month that the first half of 2010 set a loss record for natural disasters; overall it estimates that the number of extreme weather events like windstorms and floods have tripled since 1980, and is expected to grow with warming.

That could be especially true for extreme flooding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that warming is, on the whole, likely to increase intense rain and snowfall, leading to more catastrophic floods like the ones we're seeing in Pakistan. Warmer temperatures will also mean that colder or high-elevation areas that once received most of their precipitation in snow will get more of it in rainfall—and if the people and the land are ill-equipped to deal with heavy rain, that shift can also lead to more floods as well.

In India, that's exactly what appears to be happening to the Himalayan town of Leh, which has been inundated by flash floods that have killed more than 160 people. I've visited this remote and beautiful settlement twice: once for a holiday, and last year for a story on the impact of climate change on the Himalayas. There's a saying about this Buddhist outpost, home to many refugees from nearby Tibet: "the passes are so high and the land is so barren, only a dear friend or a serious enemy will reach here." A cold desert, it receives less than 5 in. of precipitation a year—most of it in snow—so when the area is hit by a sudden extreme storm, the nearby Indus River swells and swallows roads, villages and monasteries. When I visited Leh last years, town officials told me that it was snowing less and raining more—already a problem, given the area's dependence on meltwater for irrigation. (The snowpack of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which helps feed California, is also dwindling.) Now Leh—already poor—will need to recover from a true catastrophe.

It's all part of what Thomas Friedman has called "global weirding"—the weather gets strange and unpredictable, with the extremes getting more extreme. And unpredictability can kill—cities and countries are forced to deal with natural disasters on a scale they've never had to before, no longer able to look to the past for a reasonable expectation of what the future will be. We'll need to get better at adapting to disasters—even poor countries can provide some protection, as Bangladesh has shown by fortifying itself against sea-level rise. But the heartbreaking Asian floods should be one more reminder of the need to put the world on a path to lower carbon emissions—before the weather reaches extremes that no one can handle.

 

[Hafizzz]

When small "disasters" happen in the Western world, the Western media
pressures the world to donate money to them but when gigantic disasters happen in Asia, the West ignores them as if "so what ? people die every day. so what's the big deal ?"

 

[SpArK]

When small "disasters" happen in the Western world, the Western media
pressures the world to donate money to them but when gigantic disasters happen in Asia, the West ignores them as if "so what ? people die every day. so what's the big deal ?"

Check the status of aid.. west has been generous, more than east , north and south

 

[muse]

Rubbish! Floods in Pakistan are a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing -- look, monsoon rains and floods are a given in Pakistan - did the Pakistani government prepare for the floods? NO!, instead they relied on Western Aid, some politiicans even ensured the breaching of structures so that their property holdings would not be effected by the floods.

It's all good and fine to discuss climate change, but the floods in Pakistan are not a good example of this.

 

[SpArK]

Rubbish! Floods in Pakistan are a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing -- look, monsoon rains and floods are a given in Pakistan - did the Pakistani government prepare for the floods? NO!, instead they relied on Western Aid, some politiicans even ensured the breaching of structures so that their property holdings would not be effected by the floods.

It's all good and fine to discuss climate change, but the floods in Pakistan are not a good example of this.

What about massive floods in India and China????

a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing ????

 

[muse]

Certainly! - Rains and floods are a given - instead of voodo science, governements may concentrate on planning and preparing -- Floods in India, for our Indian forum members holding voodoo science instea dof the government accountable, can be understood, given that Indian forum members cannot seem to get their heads around the idea that the govt, especially the indian govt, is not just ineffective, but negligent. I would say the same in China.

Can we use science to help governemnt and private institutions be able to predict the severity of rains/stroms, the amount of water being carried in the monsoon clouds -- these are areas in which to concentrate instead of blaming physical phenomenon that take centuries and millenia to even be noticed, let alone be ammenable to being effected.

 

[Spring Onion]

Rubbish! Floods in Pakistan are a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing -- look, monsoon rains and floods are a given in Pakistan - did the Pakistani government prepare for the floods? NO!, instead they relied on Western Aid, some politiicans even ensured the breaching of structures so that their property holdings would not be effected by the floods.

It's all good and fine to discuss climate change, but the floods in Pakistan are not a good example of this.

Last year when i was attending a workshop in Japan there was this climate change discussion going on and some speakers were trying hard to blame everything on climate change even Katrina in US.

But a western speaker had proved it with examples and logics graphics that it was all rubbish and a ploy to extract more funds in the name of fighting the climate change.

Now i personally dont have any deep study to comment on both sides

 

[SpArK]

Certainly! - Rains and floods are a given - instead of voodo science, governements may concentrate on planning and preparing -- Floods in India, for our Indian forum members holding voodoo science instea dof the government accountable, can be understood, given that Indian forum members cannot seem to get their heads around the idea that the govt, especially the indian govt, is not just ineffective, but negligent. I would say the same in China.

Can we use science to help governemnt and private institutions be able to predict the severity of rains/stroms, the amount of water being carried in the monsoon clouds -- these are areas in which to concentrate instead of blaming physical phenomenon that take centuries and millenia to even be noticed, let alone be ammenable to being effected.

Whats the use of prediction when we can prevent the catastrophes caused by the floods.

Flood can be partially blamed also on the massive deforestation and the encroachment on banks by people.

 

[Neither Right Nor Wrong]

Rubbish! Floods in Pakistan are a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing -- look, monsoon rains and floods are a given in Pakistan - did the Pakistani government prepare for the floods? NO!, instead they relied on Western Aid, some politiicans even ensured the breaching of structures so that their property holdings would not be effected by the floods.

It's all good and fine to discuss climate change, but the floods in Pakistan are not a good example of this.

Well as I understand ....govts have been ignorant for many years now ..why so much destruction this time ??...and as these are the biggest floods in Pakistan in over hundred years.

Plus it is not a localised catastrophe ..there are floods in China(over a thousand killed) ..cloud bursts in India(hundreds killed)..fires in Russia..not all the govts are incompetent.

jet streams are moving much further inland..than they ever use too...clearly something is changing .

 

[Tractor]

What about massive floods in India and China????

a result of government negligence with regard to planning and preparing ????

In my opinion that is exactly the point of how these catastrophes happen.The 2000-people-dead mass mud-rock flow in Gansu,China is really a shame let alone 80000-people-dead earthquake 2 years ago.

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Analysis: Pakistan floods, Russia heat fit climate trend

(Reuters) - Devastating floods in Pakistan and Russia's heatwave match predictions of extremes caused by global warming even though it is impossible to blame mankind for single severe weather events, scientists say.

This year is on track to be the warmest since reliable temperature records began in the mid-19th century, beating 1998, mainly due to a build-up of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

"We will always have climate extremes. But it looks like climate change is exacerbating the intensity of the extremes," said Omar Baddour, chief of climate data management applications at WMO headquarters in Geneva.

"It is too early to point to a human fingerprint" behind individual weather events, he said.

Recent extremes include mudslides in China and heat records from Finland to Kuwait -- adding to evidence of a changing climate even as U.N. negotiations on a new global treaty for costly cuts in greenhouse gas emissions have stalled.

Reinsurer Munich Re said a natural catastrophe database it runs "shows that the number of extreme weather events like windstorm and floods has tripled since 1980, and the trend is expected to persist."

The worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years have killed more than 1,600 people and left 2 million homeless.

"Global warming is one reason" for the rare spate of weather extremes, said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengarbe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

DOWNPOURS

He pointed to the heatwave and related forest fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan, rains in China and downpours in countries including Germany and Poland. "We have four such extremes in the last few weeks. This is very seldom," he said.

The weather extremes, and the chance of a record-warm 2010, undercut a view of skeptics that the world is merely witnessing natural swings perhaps caused by variations in the sun's output.

Russia's worst drought in decades has led to fires that have almost doubled death rates in Moscow to around 700 per day, an official said. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a grain export ban from August 15 to December 31.

Nearly 1,500 people have died in landslides and flooding caused by months of torrential rains across China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Baddour said one cause of a shift in monsoon rains in Asia seemed to be a knock-on effect of La Nina, a natural cooling of the Pacific region.

Scientists say it is impossible to pin the blame for individual events from hurricanes to sandstorms solely on human activities led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Still, one study concluded that global warming had doubled the chances of heatwaves similar to a scorching 2003 summer in Europe, in which 35,000 people died. Those temperatures could not convincingly be explained by natural variations.

"It may be possible to use climate models to determine whether human influences have changed the likelihood of certain types of extreme events," the U.N. panel of climate scientists said in its latest 2007 report.

That report said it was at least 90 percent likely that most warming in the past 50 years was caused by mankind, a finding questioned by skeptics who have pointed to errors in the report such as an exaggeration of the melt of Himalayan glaciers.

"Warming of the climate is likely to bring more events of this sort," said Henning Rodhe, professor emeritus of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, of the Russian heatwave.

"But you can't draw the conclusion that this is caused by global warming."

Most countries agreed at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen last year to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, a tough goal since temperatures already rose 0.7C in the 20th century.

The latest round of U.N. climate talks in Bonn, from August 2-6, ended with growing doubts that a global climate treaty could still be agreed as hoped by some nations in 2010 despite deep splits about sharing the burden of curbs on emissions.

U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has all but abandoned climate change legislation this year. The United States, the number two greenhouse gas emitter behind China, is the only major industrialized nation with no law to cut emissions.

Analysis: Pakistan floods, Russia heat fit climate trend | Reuters

 

[Cheetah786]

When small "disasters" happen in the Western world, the Western media
pressures the world to donate money to them but when gigantic disasters happen in Asia, the West ignores them as if "so what ? people die every day. so what's the big deal ?"

This is exactly why Pakistan is in freefall right now as we are Always extending the hand for donations sorry dude it is not west thats supposed to run our country its the ***** we have in Islamabad.

what do U think the western media is going to do when your president is visiting England and France and staying at his chateau on both countries while people back home are drowning its time dude we Pakistani started blaming so called elite.