Flooding in Pakistan has affected over 33 million people, with a third of the country now underwater amid the unprecedented amount of rainfall this summer. This monsoon season has been ‘supercharged’ by climate change killing over 1,100 people since mid-June. The flood has damaged over 1 million homes and left villages stranded and underwater. Roads and bridges are being washed away, crops are being wiped out, and half a million people have sought shelter in relief camps.
Source: Bloomberg Quicktake: Now/Youtube
This summer, the National Disaster Management Authority of Pakistan said that the country got 133 percent of its average monsoon season rainfall.
For every degree Celsius that the global temperature rises, the Earth holds 7 percent more moisture. Scientists have seen an increase in atmospheric moisture because of the air’s ability to hold more moisture as it warms up. Storms that are supplied by Climate change with increasing moisture produce heavier rain and snow. The melting glaciers in the mountains of Pakistan are also making the flooding worse due to the heat waves this summer melting the 7,000 glaciers.
“Pakistan’s priority, at the moment, is this climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions,” Pakistan’s Minister of Climate change Sherry Rehman said last week. She added that the country ‘is going through its eighth cycle of monsoon while normally the country has only three to four cycles of rain. The percentages of super flood torrents are shocking.”
The increase in atmospheric moisture is primarily due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that 750,000 farm animals have been killed in recent weeks due to the flooding.
“Pakistan is living through a serious climate catastrophe, one of the hardest in the decade,” Rehman said in a video posted to Twitter. “We are, at the moment, at the ground zero of the frontline of extreme weather events in an unrelenting cascade of heat waves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, flood events, and now the monster monsoon of the decade is wreaking nonstop havoc throughout the country.”
According to a report, South Asian economies are ten times more exposed to global-warming threats over the coming decades than the rest of the world. Monsoons are nothing new to the area but are becoming increasingly worse due to Climate change.
Even though we can’t see the global impacts of Climate change every day, it is truly a global problem. This French Artist created an eye-opening depiction of what the world will look like post-climate change. We need to work toward fighting Climate change and remember that our actions can impact people all over the world who could be paying a much higher price than we think.
Please visit these local organizations to find out how you can Donate: HANDS Pakistan, Pakistan Red Crescent Society, and Islamic Relief UK.
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