Climate change responsible for floods: experts

WASHINGTON: Senior government officials have joined scientists in blaming climate change for the devastating floods in Pakistan and other extreme weather events around the globe.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Pakistan’s Dawn TV, said “there is a linkage” between the Pakistan floods and climate change.

In his address to a special UN meeting on the floods last week, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also said that Pakistan’s flooding “reconfirms our extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change”.

Scientists have said the floods in Pakistan --- and the fires in Russia, the mudslides in China, the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa --- are enunciations of scenarios climate forecasters have long predicted.

“There’s no doubt that clearly the climate change is… a major contributing factor” in this “unprecedented sequence of extreme weather” over the past month, said Dr Ghassem Asrar, the director of the World Climate Research Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation.

Climate experts at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) endorse his claim, saying “this is what global warming looks like”.

“When you have the changes in climate that affect weather that we’re now seeing, I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out,” agreed Secretary Clinton.

Both the UN International Panel on Climate Change and WMO have reiterated that point in light of the Pakistan floods.

Experts point out that the flooding and forest fires, which followed a historic drought, coincide with record heat elsewhere in addition to downpours and landslides in China.

Scientists warn that man-caused climate changes can contribute to those disasters happening more frequently.

A study published in 2006 in a prestigious journal called Science found the level of heavy rainfall in the monsoon over South Asia had more than doubled in the past 50 years, and the authors predicted increased disaster potential from heavy flooding.

In its 2007 report, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body created by the UN, concluded that “it is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.”

IPCC chief R.K. Pachauri told Inter Press Service that “the floods of the kind that hit Pakistan may become more frequent and more intense in the future in this and other parts of the world”.

Earlier this month, WMO made a similarly qualified assessment.

“While a longer time range is required to establish whether an individual event is attributable to climate change, the sequence of current events matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming,” it said. 

Source; www.dawn.com