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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Tue Sep 9, 2014, 12:28 PM Sep 2014

Catastrophic Floods are the new normal in Pakistan


Catastrophic floods: the new normal in Pakistan
In Pakistan, where at least 207 people died in the past weeks' flooding, crippling and catastrophic floods have become the new normal. The past four consecutive monsoon seasons--2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010--have all seen top-five most expensive flood disasters in Pakistani history. The worst came in 2010, when the second heaviest monsoon rains of the past 50 years triggered rampaging floods that inundated one-fifth of the country, killing 1,985 people and causing a staggering $9.5 billion in damage--4% of the nation's GDP--according to the International Disaster Database, EM-DAT. Part of the reason for the increase in destructive flooding is due to poor flood control infrastructure, combined with a rising population and ineffective government policies.


Heavy monsoon rainfall events are increasing
A warming climate loads the dice in favor of heavier extreme precipitation events. This occurs because more water vapor can evaporate into a warmer atmosphere, increasing the chances of record heavy downpours. In a study published in Science in 2006, Goswami et al. found that the level of heavy rainfall activity in the monsoon over India had more than doubled in the 50 years since the 1950s, leading to an increased disaster potential from heavy flooding. Moderate and weak rain events decreased during those 50 years, leaving the total amount of rain deposited by the monsoon roughly constant. The authors commented, "These findings are in tune with model projections and some observations that indicate an increase in heavy rain events and a decrease in weak events under global warming scenarios." However, a 2011 study by Ghosh et al., "Lack of uniform trends but increasing spatial variability in observed Indian rainfall extremes", cautioned that the observed increase in heavy precipitation events in India had a very complicated pattern that was not easily quantified. In general, we should expect to see an increased number of disastrous monsoon floods in coming decades if the climate continues to warm as expected. Since the population continues to increase at a rapid rate in the region, death tolls from monsoon flooding disasters are likely to climb dramatically in coming decades. However, my greater concern for India is drought. The monsoon rains often fail during El Niño years, and more than 4.2 million people died in India due to droughts between 1900 - 2012. Up until the late 1960s, it was common for the failure of the monsoon rains to kill millions of people in India. The drought of 1965 - 1967 killed at least 1.5 million people. However, since the Green Revolution of the late 1960s--a government initiative to improve food self-sufficiency using new technology and high-yield grains--failure of the monsoon rains has not led to mass starvation in India. It is uncertain whether of not the Green Revolution can keep up with India's booming population, and the potential that climate change might bring more severe droughts. Climate models show a wide range of possibilities for the future of the Indian monsoon, and it is unclear at present what the future might hold. However, the fact that one of the worst droughts in India's history occurred in 2009 shows that serious droughts have to be a major concern for the future. The five worst Indian monsoons along with the rainfall deficits for the nation:

1) 1877, -33%
2) 1899, -29%
3) 1918, -25%
4) 1972, -24%
5) 2009, -22%



Figure 1. A temple is partially submerged in floodwaters in Jammu, India, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

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http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2791
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Catastrophic Floods are the new normal in Pakistan (Original Post) n2doc Sep 2014 OP
Where does it say "new normal" Sopkoviak Sep 2014 #1
Horrific floods in Pakistan and India malaise Sep 2014 #2
Pakistan is the worst nation in Asia when it comes to deforestation. Xithras Sep 2014 #3
"booming population" nt msongs Sep 2014 #4
 

Sopkoviak

(357 posts)
1. Where does it say "new normal"
Tue Sep 9, 2014, 12:58 PM
Sep 2014

FTA:

The heavy rains fell in what has been a below-average monsoon season, with rainfall from June 1 - September 3 totaling 15% below average over India and 32% below average over the flood-hit northern provinces of Jammu and Kashmir, according to the India Meteorological Department.


There is no such thing as “average” climate. It is a meaningless term when talking about fractal distributions. Thus, the entire basis of Climate Science, the idea that climate can be characterized by “Anomalies” is false.

You cannot characterize climate by how much it deviates from the mean, because the mean has no meaning. Dynamic systems are not like a coin toss or toss of the dice. They follow the power law distribution, not the normal distribution.

Xithras

(16,191 posts)
3. Pakistan is the worst nation in Asia when it comes to deforestation.
Tue Sep 9, 2014, 01:19 PM
Sep 2014

It is consistently rated as the most heavily deforested nation in Asia, and the rate of deforestation has been INCREASING over the past decade. In the past 20 years, nearly 50% of the nations northern forests have permanently disappeared. We're talking about millions of acres of forest lands being clear cut. And they're not replanting them.

The mountains in northwestern Pakistan are steep. With no trees to protect the undergrowth and hold the water, rainfall simply runs directly into the rivers and down into these towns and cities. Water that once trickled slowly into these rivers, keeping them flowing for months, now rushes downstream and vanishes within days of a storm. Rivers that were once manageable are now uncontrollable, and rivers that once flowed year round are now completely dry within weeks of the end of monsoon season.

Environmental destruction has consequences. Until the government of Pakistan gets serious about combating illegal logging and puts a program into place to replant these forests, this problem is just going to get worse.

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