Originally this story appear in Guardians and is part of Climate table cooperation.
The climate crisis is the main suspect for the devastating scale of the floods in Pakistan, which killed more than 1,000 people and affected 30 million. But the disaster, which is still underway, is most likely the result of a deadly combination of factors, including the vulnerability of poor people, the high mountain slopes in some regions, the destruction of surprises of embankments and dams, and some natural climate variability.
The terrible scale of the floods is unquestionable. Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist of Climate analysis group, based in Islamabad.
The obvious cause is record rainfall. “Pakistan has never seen a continuous monsoon cycle [rains] like this,” Sherry Rehman says, Pakistan’s Minister of Climate Change. “Eight weeks of non-stop flushing has left huge bodies of water underwater. This was a cataclysm from all sides.” “The monster monsoon is wreaking havoc across the country,” she said.
From the beginning of the month, the rainfall is nine times higher than the average in Sindh . province and five times higher in the whole of Pakistan. The underlying physics is why rainfall is becoming increasingly intense around the world — warmer air holds more moisture.
Scientists are trying to determine how much global warming is causing the rainfall and flooding. But analysis of the previous worst flood in 2010 suggests it will be substantial. That “Superflood” has more possibilities by global heating, causing more intense rains.
One study found that warmer oceans and Arctic warming were linked to the 2010 water supermass because these factors affect jet streams, a type of high-level wind that circles the planet. The greater meander of the jet stream has resulted in both prolonged rain in Pakistan and a severe heatwave in Russia that year.
And according to a global study in 2021, heating is making South Asian monsoon stronger and more erraticEvery 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature leads to 5% more precipitation.
Pakistan has suffered from frequent floods since 2010, as well as heat waves and wildfires. “Climate change is really affecting us,” says Saeed. “It has now become the norm that every year we are faced with extreme events.”
According to Liz Stephens, associate professor of climate risk and resilience at the University of Reading, UK, current floods can be expected less than once a century. “We can see this is a very severe flood and in many places it will be worse than 2010, when flooding killed 1,700 people.”
Stephens said two key factors leading to the high death toll were flash floods and the destruction of river embankments. Some ferocious rains have hit places where water rushes from steep slopes. “Flash floods are difficult to give good warnings and quickly get people out of harm’s way,” she said.
