Pakistan S Monsoon On Steroids Shows The World That Extreme Weather Is Never Far Away

“The rain has been off the charts,” Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman told Global News from Islamabad in a series of WhatsApp messages. Among the worst-hit areas is the southern province of Sindh, home to nearly 50 million people and considered the country’s southern breadbasket. Nationally, the government says 33 million people are affected. The UN estimates that about a fifth of them need humanitarian assistance. “Just in August, Sindh province battled seven times the rain it had ever seen, which literally drowned the whole (province) in a huge ocean of water, with nowhere to drain,” Rehman said. While it may seem like another natural disaster half a world away, climate experts fear the extreme weather that has ravaged Pakistan could happen anywhere. In fact, it already has in the form of last summer’s heat and fall’s flooding in BC, to say nothing of this summer’s heat emergency across Europe. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the storms in Pakistan “a monsoon on steroids” and, once again, warned of the looming dangers of climate change for the future of humanity. “Let’s stop sleepwalking into the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he tweeted. “Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids. More than 1000 people have been killed – with millions more lives shattered. This colossal crisis calls for urgent, collective action to help the government and people of Pakistan in their hour of need. pic.twitter.com/aVFFy4Irwa — António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 30, 2022 There is little debate that human activities are warming the planet and wreaking havoc with the world’s weather. Last year’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, confirmed as much and 97 percent of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is caused by human activity. “Heat waves are the most obvious,” says Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, referring to the type of extreme weather events most directly linked to climate change. As heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels build up in the atmosphere, they act as a blanket around the Earth, gradually warming the planet, increasing the likelihood of warm weather events.

		Read more: Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘neutralized’ by climate change, scientists say 		
		read more 		


			Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘eliminated’ by climate change, scientists say 	  

This, Francis says, creates a positive feedback loop that can lead to heavy rains like those experienced in Pakistan, or for that matter last fall in British Columbia, that wiped out parts of the Coquihalla Highway and left the Fraser Valley flooded . “Because we’ve warmed the oceans, because we’ve warmed the atmosphere, there’s now more evaporation from the oceans, from the land, from the plants, into the air,” he says. “And so, literally, when it rains, it pours. “Any given storm, if it formed 50 years ago, would get less rain than it does today.” Sean Fleming, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, describes Earth as a water planet. Most of it is covered by water, and when the oceans warm, as is the case with global warming, it has an impact on the climate. “More than 70 percent of [Earth] covered by ocean. So as you heat it up, you have more evaporation, you have more water moving around, you have a more intense hydrologic cycle.” “We certainly seem to be seeing increased frequency and severity of storms.” In addition to more moisture in the atmosphere, he and other experts say changes in the world’s wind patterns are playing a key role. These wind patterns, known as the jet stream, affect the frequency and intensity of severe weather around the world. Jet streams are like huge belts of fast-flowing wind that cross the planet in the upper atmosphere. They affect weather systems by moving them along with their flow or, conversely, keeping extreme weather events locked in place. “Anything that affects the jet stream will affect our weather,” says Francis. Last year BC, a weaker, wavy jet stream closed in on a huge amount of heat in the southern part of the province. Subdued wind patterns failed to break the heat cycle for days and the province baked under temperatures never before experienced in Canada. The village of Lytton hit 49.6C, leaving forecasters shocked. Throughout B.C. last summer, more than 600 people died from exposure to extreme heat. In Pakistan, jet streams did not appear to be a major factor in this year’s monsoon. Instead, says Akshay Deoras, a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the UK, a series of rain-carrying low pressure systems that formed over the Bay of Bengal played a big role in triggering the heavy rainfall in August. . More moisture, both in the atmosphere and from already moist land surfaces, could have helped to enhance the lifespan and intensity of these monsoon systems. Because of these changes, Deoras says, “we expect the … South Asian monsoon circulation to intensify.” “So that’s the whole problem, your seasons are intensifying on a larger scale… You’re getting a lot more rain than you should in the normal scenario,” says Deoras. Global warming, he says, is also causing Pakistan’s glaciers to melt, leading to a double whammy — more water from the mountains flowing into rivers and dams, and more water from the skies further taxing the capacity of these waterways. The effects of these complex tragedies weigh on some of the most vulnerable people on the planet who, collectively, account for a fraction of total global emissions. That it is the world’s most vulnerable who must pay the price for the rich world’s excesses is the tragic irony of climate change, says Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister. Her country has been accused of poor planning and mismanagement, but, she insists, no amount of money or planning could have prevented the massive amount of rain that fell on the country. “Many would prefer to shift the blame to poor planning, and I would never say that we are close to optimal climate governance,” says Rehman. “But is this really the reason for the warming and flooding? Of course not.” “Our emissions are not responsible for even one percent of global warming.”

		Read more: Worried about climate change?  Here’s what you need to know about ‘ecological grief’ 		

title: “Pakistan S Monsoon On Steroids Shows The World That Extreme Weather Is Never Far Away Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Matthew Bland”

“The rain has been off the charts,” Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman told Global News from Islamabad in a series of WhatsApp messages. Among the worst-hit areas is the southern province of Sindh, home to nearly 50 million people and considered the country’s southern breadbasket. Nationally, the government says 33 million people are affected. The UN estimates that about a fifth of them need humanitarian assistance. “Just in August, Sindh province battled seven times the rain it had ever seen, which literally drowned the whole (province) in a huge ocean of water, with nowhere to drain,” Rehman said. While it may seem like another natural disaster half a world away, climate experts fear the extreme weather that has ravaged Pakistan could happen anywhere. In fact, it already has in the form of last summer’s heat and fall’s flooding in BC, to say nothing of this summer’s heat emergency across Europe. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the storms in Pakistan “a monsoon on steroids” and, once again, warned of the looming dangers of climate change for the future of humanity. “Let’s stop sleepwalking into the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he tweeted. “Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids. More than 1000 people have been killed – with millions more lives shattered. This colossal crisis calls for urgent, collective action to help the government and people of Pakistan in their hour of need. pic.twitter.com/aVFFy4Irwa — António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 30, 2022 There is little debate that human activities are warming the planet and wreaking havoc with the world’s weather. Last year’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, confirmed as much and 97 percent of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is caused by human activity. “Heat waves are the most obvious,” says Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, referring to the type of extreme weather events most directly linked to climate change. As heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels build up in the atmosphere, they act as a blanket around the Earth, gradually warming the planet, increasing the likelihood of warm weather events.

		Read more: Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘neutralized’ by climate change, scientists say 		
		read more 		


			Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘eliminated’ by climate change, scientists say 	  

This, Francis says, creates a positive feedback loop that can lead to heavy rains like those experienced in Pakistan, or for that matter last fall in British Columbia, that wiped out parts of the Coquihalla Highway and left the Fraser Valley flooded . “Because we’ve warmed the oceans, because we’ve warmed the atmosphere, there’s now more evaporation from the oceans, from the land, from the plants, into the air,” he says. “And so, literally, when it rains, it pours. “Any given storm, if it formed 50 years ago, would get less rain than it does today.” Sean Fleming, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, describes Earth as a water planet. Most of it is covered by water, and when the oceans warm, as is the case with global warming, it has an impact on the climate. “More than 70 percent of [Earth] covered by ocean. So as you heat it up, you have more evaporation, you have more water moving around, you have a more intense hydrologic cycle.” “We certainly seem to be seeing increased frequency and severity of storms.” In addition to more moisture in the atmosphere, he and other experts say changes in the world’s wind patterns are playing a key role. These wind patterns, known as the jet stream, affect the frequency and intensity of severe weather around the world. Jet streams are like huge belts of fast-flowing wind that cross the planet in the upper atmosphere. They affect weather systems by moving them along with their flow or, conversely, keeping extreme weather events locked in place. “Anything that affects the jet stream will affect our weather,” says Francis. Last year BC, a weaker, wavy jet stream closed in on a huge amount of heat in the southern part of the province. Subdued wind patterns failed to break the heat cycle for days and the province baked under temperatures never before experienced in Canada. The village of Lytton hit 49.6C, leaving forecasters shocked. Throughout B.C. last summer, more than 600 people died from exposure to extreme heat. In Pakistan, jet streams did not appear to be a major factor in this year’s monsoon. Instead, says Akshay Deoras, a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the UK, a series of rain-carrying low pressure systems that formed over the Bay of Bengal played a big role in triggering the heavy rainfall in August. . More moisture, both in the atmosphere and from already moist land surfaces, could have helped to enhance the lifespan and intensity of these monsoon systems. Because of these changes, Deoras says, “we expect the … South Asian monsoon circulation to intensify.” “So that’s the whole problem, your seasons are intensifying on a larger scale… You’re getting a lot more rain than you should in the normal scenario,” says Deoras. Global warming, he says, is also causing Pakistan’s glaciers to melt, leading to a double whammy — more water from the mountains flowing into rivers and dams, and more water from the skies further taxing the capacity of these waterways. The effects of these complex tragedies weigh on some of the most vulnerable people on the planet who, collectively, account for a fraction of total global emissions. That it is the world’s most vulnerable who must pay the price for the rich world’s excesses is the tragic irony of climate change, says Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister. Her country has been accused of poor planning and mismanagement, but, she insists, no amount of money or planning could have prevented the massive amount of rain that fell on the country. “Many would prefer to shift the blame to poor planning, and I would never say that we are close to optimal climate governance,” says Rehman. “But is this really the reason for the warming and flooding? Of course not.” “Our emissions are not responsible for even one percent of global warming.”

		Read more: Worried about climate change?  Here’s what you need to know about ‘ecological grief’ 		

title: “Pakistan S Monsoon On Steroids Shows The World That Extreme Weather Is Never Far Away Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-28” author: “Maureen Pritchard”

“The rain has been off the charts,” Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman told Global News from Islamabad in a series of WhatsApp messages. Among the worst-hit areas is the southern province of Sindh, home to nearly 50 million people and considered the country’s southern breadbasket. Nationally, the government says 33 million people are affected. The UN estimates that about a fifth of them need humanitarian assistance. “Just in August, Sindh province battled seven times the rain it had ever seen, which literally drowned the whole (province) in a huge ocean of water, with nowhere to drain,” Rehman said. While it may seem like another natural disaster half a world away, climate experts fear the extreme weather that has ravaged Pakistan could happen anywhere. In fact, it already has in the form of last summer’s heat and fall’s flooding in BC, to say nothing of this summer’s heat emergency across Europe. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the storms in Pakistan “a monsoon on steroids” and, once again, warned of the looming dangers of climate change for the future of humanity. “Let’s stop sleepwalking into the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he tweeted. “Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids. More than 1000 people have been killed – with millions more lives shattered. This colossal crisis calls for urgent, collective action to help the government and people of Pakistan in their hour of need. pic.twitter.com/aVFFy4Irwa — António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 30, 2022 There is little debate that human activities are warming the planet and wreaking havoc with the world’s weather. Last year’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, confirmed as much and 97 percent of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is caused by human activity. “Heat waves are the most obvious,” says Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, referring to the type of extreme weather events most directly linked to climate change. As heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels build up in the atmosphere, they act as a blanket around the Earth, gradually warming the planet, increasing the likelihood of warm weather events.

		Read more: Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘neutralized’ by climate change, scientists say 		
		read more 		


			Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘eliminated’ by climate change, scientists say 	  

This, Francis says, creates a positive feedback loop that can lead to heavy rains like those experienced in Pakistan, or for that matter last fall in British Columbia, that wiped out parts of the Coquihalla Highway and left the Fraser Valley flooded . “Because we’ve warmed the oceans, because we’ve warmed the atmosphere, there’s now more evaporation from the oceans, from the land, from the plants, into the air,” he says. “And so, literally, when it rains, it pours. “Any given storm, if it formed 50 years ago, would get less rain than it does today.” Sean Fleming, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, describes Earth as a water planet. Most of it is covered by water, and when the oceans warm, as is the case with global warming, it has an impact on the climate. “More than 70 percent of [Earth] covered by ocean. So as you heat it up, you have more evaporation, you have more water moving around, you have a more intense hydrologic cycle.” “We certainly seem to be seeing increased frequency and severity of storms.” In addition to more moisture in the atmosphere, he and other experts say changes in the world’s wind patterns are playing a key role. These wind patterns, known as the jet stream, affect the frequency and intensity of severe weather around the world. Jet streams are like huge belts of fast-flowing wind that cross the planet in the upper atmosphere. They affect weather systems by moving them along with their flow or, conversely, keeping extreme weather events locked in place. “Anything that affects the jet stream will affect our weather,” says Francis. Last year BC, a weaker, wavy jet stream closed in on a huge amount of heat in the southern part of the province. Subdued wind patterns failed to break the heat cycle for days and the province baked under temperatures never before experienced in Canada. The village of Lytton hit 49.6C, leaving forecasters shocked. Throughout B.C. last summer, more than 600 people died from exposure to extreme heat. In Pakistan, jet streams did not appear to be a major factor in this year’s monsoon. Instead, says Akshay Deoras, a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the UK, a series of rain-carrying low pressure systems that formed over the Bay of Bengal played a big role in triggering the heavy rainfall in August. . More moisture, both in the atmosphere and from already moist land surfaces, could have helped to enhance the lifespan and intensity of these monsoon systems. Because of these changes, Deoras says, “we expect the … South Asian monsoon circulation to intensify.” “So that’s the whole problem, your seasons are intensifying on a larger scale… You’re getting a lot more rain than you should in the normal scenario,” says Deoras. Global warming, he says, is also causing Pakistan’s glaciers to melt, leading to a double whammy — more water from the mountains flowing into rivers and dams, and more water from the skies further taxing the capacity of these waterways. The effects of these complex tragedies weigh on some of the most vulnerable people on the planet who, collectively, account for a fraction of total global emissions. That it is the world’s most vulnerable who must pay the price for the rich world’s excesses is the tragic irony of climate change, says Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister. Her country has been accused of poor planning and mismanagement, but, she insists, no amount of money or planning could have prevented the massive amount of rain that fell on the country. “Many would prefer to shift the blame to poor planning, and I would never say that we are close to optimal climate governance,” says Rehman. “But is this really the reason for the warming and flooding? Of course not.” “Our emissions are not responsible for even one percent of global warming.”

		Read more: Worried about climate change?  Here’s what you need to know about ‘ecological grief’ 		

title: “Pakistan S Monsoon On Steroids Shows The World That Extreme Weather Is Never Far Away Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-06” author: “Laura Padilla”

“The rain has been off the charts,” Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman told Global News from Islamabad in a series of WhatsApp messages. Among the worst-hit areas is the southern province of Sindh, home to nearly 50 million people and considered the country’s southern breadbasket. Nationally, the government says 33 million people are affected. The UN estimates that about a fifth of them need humanitarian assistance. “Just in August, Sindh province battled seven times the rain it had ever seen, which literally drowned the whole (province) in a huge ocean of water, with nowhere to drain,” Rehman said. While it may seem like another natural disaster half a world away, climate experts fear the extreme weather that has ravaged Pakistan could happen anywhere. In fact, it already has in the form of last summer’s heat and fall’s flooding in BC, to say nothing of this summer’s heat emergency across Europe. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the storms in Pakistan “a monsoon on steroids” and, once again, warned of the looming dangers of climate change for the future of humanity. “Let’s stop sleepwalking into the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he tweeted. “Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids. More than 1000 people have been killed – with millions more lives shattered. This colossal crisis calls for urgent, collective action to help the government and people of Pakistan in their hour of need. pic.twitter.com/aVFFy4Irwa — António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 30, 2022 There is little debate that human activities are warming the planet and wreaking havoc with the world’s weather. Last year’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, confirmed as much and 97 percent of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is caused by human activity. “Heat waves are the most obvious,” says Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, referring to the type of extreme weather events most directly linked to climate change. As heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels build up in the atmosphere, they act as a blanket around the Earth, gradually warming the planet, increasing the likelihood of warm weather events.

		Read more: Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘neutralized’ by climate change, scientists say 		
		read more 		


			Pakistan’s deadly floods ‘eliminated’ by climate change, scientists say 	  

This, Francis says, creates a positive feedback loop that can lead to heavy rains like those experienced in Pakistan, or for that matter last fall in British Columbia, that wiped out parts of the Coquihalla Highway and left the Fraser Valley flooded . “Because we’ve warmed the oceans, because we’ve warmed the atmosphere, there’s now more evaporation from the oceans, from the land, from the plants, into the air,” he says. “And so, literally, when it rains, it pours. “Any given storm, if it formed 50 years ago, would get less rain than it does today.” Sean Fleming, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, describes Earth as a water planet. Most of it is covered by water, and when the oceans warm, as is the case with global warming, it has an impact on the climate. “More than 70 percent of [Earth] covered by ocean. So as you heat it up, you have more evaporation, you have more water moving around, you have a more intense hydrologic cycle.” “We certainly seem to be seeing increased frequency and severity of storms.” In addition to more moisture in the atmosphere, he and other experts say changes in the world’s wind patterns are playing a key role. These wind patterns, known as the jet stream, affect the frequency and intensity of severe weather around the world. Jet streams are like huge belts of fast-flowing wind that cross the planet in the upper atmosphere. They affect weather systems by moving them along with their flow or, conversely, keeping extreme weather events locked in place. “Anything that affects the jet stream will affect our weather,” says Francis. Last year BC, a weaker, wavy jet stream closed in on a huge amount of heat in the southern part of the province. Subdued wind patterns failed to break the heat cycle for days and the province baked under temperatures never before experienced in Canada. The village of Lytton hit 49.6C, leaving forecasters shocked. Throughout B.C. last summer, more than 600 people died from exposure to extreme heat. In Pakistan, jet streams did not appear to be a major factor in this year’s monsoon. Instead, says Akshay Deoras, a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the UK, a series of rain-carrying low pressure systems that formed over the Bay of Bengal played a big role in triggering the heavy rainfall in August. . More moisture, both in the atmosphere and from already moist land surfaces, could have helped to enhance the lifespan and intensity of these monsoon systems. Because of these changes, Deoras says, “we expect the … South Asian monsoon circulation to intensify.” “So that’s the whole problem, your seasons are intensifying on a larger scale… You’re getting a lot more rain than you should in the normal scenario,” says Deoras. Global warming, he says, is also causing Pakistan’s glaciers to melt, leading to a double whammy — more water from the mountains flowing into rivers and dams, and more water from the skies further taxing the capacity of these waterways. The effects of these complex tragedies weigh on some of the most vulnerable people on the planet who, collectively, account for a fraction of total global emissions. That it is the world’s most vulnerable who must pay the price for the rich world’s excesses is the tragic irony of climate change, says Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister. Her country has been accused of poor planning and mismanagement, but, she insists, no amount of money or planning could have prevented the massive amount of rain that fell on the country. “Many would prefer to shift the blame to poor planning, and I would never say that we are close to optimal climate governance,” says Rehman. “But is this really the reason for the warming and flooding? Of course not.” “Our emissions are not responsible for even one percent of global warming.”

		Read more: Worried about climate change?  Here’s what you need to know about ‘ecological grief’