28 August 2017, NewSecurityBeat, Flooding in Bangladesh: Calling Out Climate Change From the High Ground. Floods have taken the lives of more than 100 people in northern Bangladesh over the last two weeks. Fully one third of the country has been flooded and some 600,000 people have been displaced in the riverine nation as a result of monsoons in India and Nepal. At international climate forums, Bangladeshi diplomats consistently decry such disasters as part of their urgent calls for action to mitigate changing weather patterns worldwide. But here in the country’s Rangpur-Kurigam region, both authorities and citizens have been reluctant to attribute these deadly disasters to the effects of climate change. Views From the Flood Zone As part of a team of social scientists from American University (Washington, DC,) and North South University (Dhaka, Bangladesh), we have been traveling the country to find out why. Authorities, already taxed by emergency relief expenditures to help citizens recover from July’s floods, do not seem eager to acknowledge yet another crisis (especially when Bangladesh’s government and its Supreme Court are embroiled in a battle for authority). The government may also be trying to avoid drawing attention to the fact that much of the flooding has come from the opening of a dam upstream on the Teesta River in India, as the two nations currently enjoy strong bilateral relations. In addition, government officials may be hesitant to label the current crisis with an abstract, diffuse concept that is more of a long-term issue, said North South University researcher Salahuddin M. Aminuzzaman. Government officials are extremely willing to “call out” natural disasters like cyclones, monsoons, floods and drought, he said; governments can provide short-term relief for concrete, short-term problems like disasters, and, if they are organized, they can improve their stock among voters. But climate change is an amorphous, distant, and foreboding challenge. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2017
28 August 2017, VOX, The “500-year” flood, explained: why Houston was so under prepared for Hurricane Harvey. It’s the city’s third “500-year” flood in the past three years. It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of the flooding and devastation that Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath are wreaking on the Houston area. Weather experts call the storm unprecedented, and note that it’s gone beyond even the most pessimistic forecasts. In the final reckoning, it’s certain that Harvey will be classified a 500-year flood — and maybe even a 1,000-year flood. But those terms can be a bit misleading — especially when high-profile people, like the president of the United States, confuse the issue by calling Harvey “a once in 500 year flood.” In theory, a 500-year flood is something that has a 1-in-500 shot of happening in any given year — in other words, the sort of event that’s so rare that it might not make sense to plan around the possibility of it happening. The problem is that 500-year floods are happening more often than probability predicts — especially in Houston. And, especially in Houston, prevention planning hasn’t evolved to acknowledge that a “500-year” flood isn’t really a 1-in-500 chance anymore. “500-year” floods are based not on history, but on probability. The severity of floods tends to get put in terms of years: a 100-year flood, a 500-year flood, a 1,000-year flood. But this isn’t an assessment of “the worst flood in” that time — places like Houston don’t actually have detailed weather records going back to 1017 AD, after all. Read More here
28 August 2017, The Conversation, Is Hurricane Harvey a harbinger for Houston’s future? Over the past week we have seen two major tropical storms devastate different parts of the world. First Typhoon Hato struck Hong Kong and Southern China killing at least a dozen people. And over the weekend Hurricane Harvey made landfall from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing extremely heavy rain to southern Texas and causing devastating floods in Houston. Tropical cyclones are, of course, a natural feature of our climate. But the extreme impacts of these recent storms, especially in Houston, has understandably led to questions over whether climate change is to blame. How are tropical cyclones changing? Tropical cyclones, called typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and hurricanes in the North Atlantic, are major storm systems that initiate near the Equator and can hit locations in the tropics and subtropics around the world. Read More here
28 August 2017, Climate Home, Link between Hurricane Harvey and climate change is unclear. Reports the devastating storm was made worse by humanity’s carbon emissions fail to grasp climate change is not just about warming. The unprecedented amount of rainfall accompanying Hurricane Harvey immediately raised the question whether and to what extent climate change is to blame. In a warming world the vapour capacity of the atmosphere increases, and more extreme rainfall, like Texas is witnessing right now, is to be expected as a result. This leads many to conclude that climate change exacerbated the impacts of hurricane Harvey. It is very appropriate to highlight that this is the kind of event we expect to see more of in a warming world. However, to apply this argument directly and attribute (and quantify) the impacts from Harvey itself to human-induced climate change, neglects that climate change is not just about warming. In a changing climate, two effects come together: not only does the atmosphere warm up (thermodynamic effect) but the atmospheric circulation, which determine where, when, and how weather systems develop, can change as well (dynamic effect). Read More here