A summer of climate disaster

Heatwaves in the US, wildfires in Europe, floods in Asia: This summer has shown how the climate crisis has made extreme weather a part of everyday life.

Some of the heaviest damage has recently occurred in Pakistan. Flooding has engulfed more than a third of the country and killed at least 1,300 people.

Scientists can’t say for sure yet that climate change caused the floods, but experts told me it was most likely a cause. Like the Times explain, climate change is making severe floods occur more and more intense. “These off-graph events are going to be more frequent, and this is just one of those examples,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Center for Climate Research.

Flooding followed a devastating heatwave in Pakistan earlier this year that sent temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists have concluded that global warming makes that heatwave happen much faster.

Climate disasters also hit many other parts of the world this year:

• In the US, a heatwave on the West Coast has sent temperatures soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit over the past few days. About 100 million Americans across the country suffered another heatwave earlier this summer. And floods have devastated many parts of the United States, including Kentucky and Missouri.

• The heat wave that previously hit Pakistan has also reached India. A severe drought also hit parts of India this summer, reducing the country’s food exports. And floods in Bengaluru, India’s tech capital, force workers to sailing and tractors to get to the office.

• One heat wave and drought in China dry up rivers, disable hydroelectric dams, and cut off ships carrying supplies.

• Another heatwave in Europe sent UK temperatures to a record 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Drought across the continent has dried up rivers, expose sunken ships from World War II and disrupt the river cruise industry. And bushfires in Europe have burned nearly three times as much land as the 2006-2021 average this year.

• In April, heavy rainfall causes floods and landslides in South Africa kill at least 45 people.

“Some of these events have no historical comparison to 200 years ago,” my colleague Raymond Zhong, who is in charge of climate change, tells me.

Why? Rising temperatures create conditions for more frequent and intense heat waves. Prolonged hot weather causes more frequent and fierce droughts and wildfires. And as it warms, more water evaporates from the oceans – leading to more moisture in the air, and subsequently more rainfall, floods and landslides.

More to come

In my conversations with experts, I call the extreme summer weather a “new normal.” But experts have pushed back on that trait. They argue that calling it normal suggests we’ve reached some plateau.

“It’s getting a lot worse,” said Kim Cobb, director of the Institute for Environment and Society at Brown. Humanity has been emitting greenhouse gases through industrialization for over a century. Those gases are already in the atmosphere, causing warming and extreme weather. Past and future emissions will continue to heat the planet over the next few decades, leading to even more disasters.

That doesn’t mean the world is helpless, experts say. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, under new Democratic spending law aim to do, can still reduce the risk of climate disasters in the medium term. In the short term, people can mitigate disasters through adaptation – for example, using better forest management to reduce the risk of wildfires or building infrastructure that is more resilient to rainfall. large and flood.

(And each year won’t automatically be worse than the year before. Factors unrelated to climate change also affect weather, including seasonal patterns like El Niño and La Niña.)

But poorer countries, like Pakistan, lack the resources to adapt without outside aid. A rapidly changing climate could also alter their plans: After historic floods in 2010, Pakistan rebuilt a destroyed bridge more than 16 feet high. This year’s flood, the bridge was flooded again.

It’s not fair in many ways. Poorer countries have contributed much less to climate change because they emit less greenhouse gases than richer countries, like I explained it before. However, some countries, like Pakistan, are currently suffering the worst consequences of global warming.

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