Authorities in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka are still looking for hundreds of missing people after floods and landslides devastated the region in recent weeks, killing more than 1,800 people.
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The heavy monsoon rains and storms that triggered deadly floods across several South and Southeast Asian nations in late November were “supercharged” by climate change, a new attribution study has concluded.
More than 1,800 people have died and some 1.2 million were left stranded after two overlapping tropical cyclones – Ditwah and Senyar – hit Indonesia’s Sumatra region and Peninsular Malaysia simultaneously, triggering deadly floods and landslides. It is one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in recent history, hitting one of the most climate vulnerable regions on Earth that is used to dealing with strong monsoon rains.
New research by the World Weather Attribution group confirmed that climate change is making cyclones like Ditwah and Senyar more frequent and the associated rainfall more intense.
The storm developed over North Indian Ocean waters that were 0.2C warmer than the historical 1991-2020 average and that would have been 1C cooler without human-caused climate change. As ocean surfaces warm, so does the air above it, causing water to be carried up to high altitudes to form clouds, while leaving a low pressure zone beneath causing more air to rush in. The warmer the air, the more water it can hold: for every extra degree Celsius of warming, air can hold 7% more moisture.
“The combination of heavy monsoon rains and climate change is a deadly mix,” said Sarah Kew, Climate Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and lead author of the study, which was published Thursday. “Monsoon rains are normal in this part of the world. What is not normal is the growing intensity of these storms and how they are affecting millions of people and claiming hundreds of lives.”
Deforestation Played a Role
Researchers also confirmed that rapid urbanization and widespread deforestation in the region exacerbated the scale of the event, a point already raised by experts and green groups in recent days.
Deforestation has changed the landscape, making it more prone to destructive floods, Leif Cocks, an Australian zoologist, primatologist, and conservationist, and founder of The Orangutan Project, told Earth.Org earlier this week.
“The destruction of rainforest itself, and the conversion to unsustainable monocultures, such as pulp paper and palm oil, removes the ‘sponge effect’ of natural rainforest, which mitigates both drought and flood events, and supplies the community with sustainable, safe flows of water,” Cocks explained. “Now, the water runs off straight away and causes the droughts and flood events we are experiencing.”
Cocks described in a post on LinkedIn last week how three days of relentless rain had “washed out roads, submerged homes and public facilities, and tragically claimed lives across the region.”
Photos: Forum Konservasi Leuser (FKL) and HAkA.
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