Extreme weather brings flood chaos round the world
18:40 30 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist Environment and Reuters
People in countries across the world, from China to India and Sudan to
Indonesia, are coping with severe wet weather, highlighting the
position of flooding as the most deadly of all natural disasters.
While single events cannot be linked to climate change, the flooding
come as research suggests that global warming will increase rainfall
in some parts of the world, including the Indian monsoon, and increase
the number of hurricanes – both due increased evaporation in a warmer
world.
One person in 10 worldwide, including one in eight city-dwellers,
lives less than 10 metres above sea-level and near the coast. This is
an "at-risk zone" for flooding and stronger storms exacerbated by
climate change, a recent study found.
China
Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across the world's most
populous nation this summer have reached nearly 700, Chinese state
media said on Monday. One tenth of China's 1.3 billion people have
been effected, and economic losses are estimated at 52.5 billion yuan
($7 billion).
In the last two days alone, fierce storms and hail killed 17 people
across four provinces. Ten died in the central province of Hubei,
where rain and hail have added to swollen waters along the country's
longest river, the Yangtze (where flood warnings have been installed)
and its main tributary, the Han. In the north-western province of
Shaanxi, five died in floods that cut off roads around Shangluo.
A hail storm on Saturday hit parts of the eastern province Anhui,
killing one person and injuring three. In the same region, millions of
residents have been grappling with the threat of the swollen Huai
River for the past month.
Farmers have borne the brunt of the damage and casualties,
underscoring the vulnerability of the huge rural population to natural
disasters. But coal miners in central China have also become victims
of the storms. Sixty-nine miners in Henan have been trapped since
Sunday in a pit flooded by rainwater that surged through an old shaft,
the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
Other parts of China are suffering meteorological misery of different
kinds. More than a million people faced shortages of drinking water in
several southern provinces as a heatwave compounded weeks of drought.
"The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing.
Records for worst-in-a-century rainstorms, droughts and heatwaves are
being broken more often," said Dong Wenjie, director-general of the
Beijing Climate Centre. "This, in fact, is closely associated with
global warming."
India and Bangladesh
Monsoon flooding, which has proven difficult to predict in the past,
has killed at least 29 people in eastern India and Bangladesh,
officials said on Monday. Hundreds of thousands remained displaced
from their homes or cut off in their villages.
Around four million people in India have been affected. In
neighbouring Bangladesh, half a million people were stranded in their
homes, while tens of thousands had found shelter in relief camps.
The floods in the low-lying nation now cover half its area (though
less than in 2004), with soldiers in boats providing medicines and
food to some marooned residents and evacuating others. The country's
summer flood death toll has now crossed 160. The monsoon flooding and
associated problems have also caused deaths in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Nepal.
Indonesia
Indonesian helicopters dropped food and other relief supplies on
Friday to thousands of people stranded on Sulawesi island by floods
and landslides.
Bad weather had hampered relief operations in the remote area where
about 85 people have died and nearly 8000 people have been displaced
from homes submerged by floods and landslides.
Landslides occur frequently in Indonesia, where tropical downpours can
quickly soak hillsides stripped of trees.
Sudan
More than 12,000 people have been affected by flooding in southern
Sudan, a nation emerging from decades of civil war. Six of the
region's 10 states have been declared a disaster zone by South Sudan's
Vice President Riek Machar.
At least two people have been reported killed by the rains and
flooding, said Lydia Poole, a UN emergency response official. Poole
said the final figure of flood victims would likely be much higher.
In northern Sudan, the central government said 59 people had been
killed and more than 100 injured in flash floods.
South Africa
Cape Town was struggling on Monday to cope with flooding that affected
thousands of people, cut off roads, and forced shantytown residents to
bale out water with buckets. Relief officials said 38,000 people have
been affected since heavy rain began lashing the city a week ago.
City disaster management spokesman Johan Minnie said it was the
highest number of people hit by flooding in five years: "We are
stretched, especially in terms of supplying disaster relief. We are at
capacity at the moment." He said the clean-up would concentrate on
clearing debris from storm-water drains which have blocked roads.
UK
Emergency workers found a man's body in a submerged field on Saturday,
bringing to at least nine the death toll in England's worst floods for
60 years.
Firefighters found the body near the historic market town of
Tewkesbury, western England, where flooding has damaged thousands of
homes and left many without running water.
The wettest summer since records began has brought two bouts of
flooding across the country since the end of June, wrecking houses and
businesses, delaying harvests and slashing milk production. The damage
is estimated by insurance companies at up to £3 billion pounds ($6.10
billion).
Forecasters have issued severe weather warnings for much of southern
England and Wales, with up to 40 millimetres (1.6 inches) of rain
expected on Saturday night. However, the Environment Agency said the
risk of flooding was "significantly lower" than from the earlier
storms.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
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