Pakistan Floods - August 2022
The Guardian newspaper reports in this article that over 1,000 lives have been lost and 33 million people have been displaced and injured since June. The number of people, reported by the National Disaster Management Authority (Pakistan), that died on Sunday was 119 and from Friday to Saturday was 45 people.
The cause of this loss of life and damage is thought to be climate change with other contributing factors such as "the vulnerability of the poor citizens, steep mountainous slopes in some regions, the unexpected destruction of embankments and dams, and some natural climate variation."
Pakistan has had an unbroken cycle of monsoon rains for eight weeks and has left a lot of infrastructural damage and a third of the country is under water. It has been reported, by the additional deputy commissioner of Swat, that roads over 130 kilometres (80 miles) had been damaged and 15 bridges were completely destroyed as the flood wreaked havoc and more than 100 houses and at least 50 hotels and restaurants were also destroyed.
Questions to be asked
What are the primary effects of this disaster?
What are the secondary effects of this disaster?
What can be done immediately?
What can be done in years to come?
Damian Carrington has reported in this article that the rainfall in the Sindh province has been nine times higher than the average and "five times higher across the whole of Pakistan." It is suggested that the warmer air holds more moisture.
There have been over 70 monsoons this season already. The seventy-seventh monsoon occurred on the 29th of August 2022.
Past floods in 2010 have killed 1,700 people.
Damian Carrington in his article continues to state that the "natural climate cycle driven by temperatures and wind variations in the Pacific may also have added to the Pakistan floods, said meteorologist Scott Duncan. The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (Enso) appears to be in its La Nina phase as it was in 2010. "La Nina is behaving very strongly in some metrics and is a significant factor for enhancing monsoon rains in my opinion," he said. However, how global heating affects Enso is not currently well understood."
(Click on the link and you can get a better image)
As you can see from the infographic that parts of South America are dry, which will have a knock on effect with the food security from that region as well as the Western USA.
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