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Posts Tagged ‘Floods’

Wars in prospect as climate change stirs unrest, UN told

February 15, 2013 Leave a comment
Imagine India in 2033. It has overtaken China as the most populous nation. Yet with 1.5 billion citizens to feed, it’s been three years since the last monsoon. Without rain, crops die and people starve.

The seeds of conflict take root.

This is one of the scenarios Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented today to members of the United Nations Security Council in New York to show the connection between climate change and global security challenges.

Either rich nations will find a way to supply needy nations suffering from damaging climate effects “or you will have all kinds of unrest and revolutions, with the export of angry and hungry people to the industrialised countries,” Schellnhuber said in an interview.

In the Marshall Islands — site of US nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s and now being lost to Read more…

Categories: Climate Change, world, World Events Tags: , , , , ,

Mozambique military called in to battle floods

January 29, 2013 Leave a comment

starafrica.com

AFP/File

Residents flee to the roof of a house in the Chokwe district of southern Mozambique, to escape flooding on January 25, 2013. Intense flooding in southern Mozambique has displaced at least 150,000 people, the United Nations said on Monday, warning that figure could yet rise further. – Copyright : AFP/File

MAPUTO (AFP)

Mozambique’s military has been called in to help tackle severe flooding that has killed 48 people and is likely to spread to the country’s central and northern regions, officials said Tuesday.

The armed forces have begun helping with clean-up operations in the devastated southern town of Chokwe, which has borne the brunt of the flooding caused by heavy rains.

“We can confirm the army is helping support the affected people,” said Benjamim Chabualo, spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told AFP.

Soldiers have also been involved in rescue efforts and the navy has ferried people by boat to reach areas isolated by flooding.

According to UN figures around 250,000 people have been affected by the floods and 146,000 people are being housed in temporary shelters.

Water levels have begun to recede in the south of the country, but the situation remains critical, and the centre and north are expected to be hit by Read more…

Categories: Mozambique Tags: ,

Australian summer lurches from fire to floods

January 29, 2013 Leave a comment

phys.org

Roger Barnes rescues a friend’s surfboard from a flooded home in the Brisbane suburb of Newmarket on Monday.
From bushfires raging in searing tinder-dry conditions to surging floodwaters and destructive tornadoes, Australia has witnessed staggering climate extremes during its summer of 2013. From bushfires raging in searing tinder-dry conditions to surging floodwaters and destructive tornadoes, Australia has witnessed staggering climate extremes during its summer of 2013.  Already this month the country’s largest city Sydney has endured its hottest day on record, a 45.8 degree Celsius (114.4 Fahrenheit) scorcher during a heatwave so extreme heat scales on government forecast maps had to be redrawn. Just a week later, ex-tropical Cyclone Oswald dumped torrential rain on coastal areas of Queensland, leaving four people dead, swamping 2,000 homes and forcing dramatic rooftop rescues of those trapped by the deluge. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who on Monday toured bushfire-hit areas in southeastern Victoria state even as turbid floodwaters swamped the nation’s northeast, said the contrast was not lost on her. “I was looking at blackened landscape, burnt trees, black Read more at: phys.org
Categories: Australia, Flood Tags: , ,

Researcher to speak on increased likelihood of Texas hurricanes

January 5, 2013 Leave a comment

statesman

Galveston, Texas in the Gulf of Mexico has the highest rate of hurricane activity than anywhere else in the USA. The Gulf area reports more hurricane activity than any other part of the US.

Galveston, Texas in the Gulf of Mexico has the highest rate of hurricane activity than anywhere else in the USA. The Gulf area reports more hurricane activity than any other part of the US.

The chances that a 15-inch rainfall might hit Central Texas in any given year have long been about 1-in-1,000. But with the warming of air that scientists expect over the century, some predict those chances might jump to 1-in-50.Kerry Emanuel, a prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor, will lecture on the topic in Austin on Tuesday. The talk, titled “Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico: The History and Future of the Texas Coast,” is free and open to the public, part of the University of Texas’ Hot Science-Cool Talks series.

“We expect hurricane-related rainfall is going to get worse over next 100 years,” Emanuel said in an interview.

While that news might seem welcome in drought-stricken Central Texas — especially since moister, hurricane rain-saturated soils are likely to Read more…

Categories: hurricanes, Texas Tags: , , ,

New figures: More of US at risk to sea level rise

March 14, 2012 2 comments

ap.org

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 4 million people across the United States, from Los Angeles to much of the East Coast, live in homes more prone to flooding from rising seas fueled by global warming, according to a new method of looking at flood risk published in two scientific papers.

The cities that have the most people living within three feet (one meter) of high tide – the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many scientists and computer models – are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York. New York City, often not thought of as a city prone to flooding, has 141,000 people at risk, which is second only to New Orleans’ 284,000. The two big Southeast Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, have 312,000 people at risk combined.

All told, 3.7 million people live in homes within three feet of high tide. More than 500 US cities have at least 10 percent of the population at increased risk, the studies said.

“Southeast Florida is definitely the highest density of population that’s really on Read more…

Categories: Climate Change Tags: , , , , ,

Climate change will shake the Earth

February 27, 2012 Leave a comment

guardian

As the Earth's crust buckles, volcanic activity will increase.

As the Earth’s crust buckles, volcanic activity will increase. Photograph: Corbis

The idea that a changing climate can persuade the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines seems, at first, to be bordering on the insane. How can what happens in the thin envelope of gas that shrouds and protects our world possibly influence the potentially Earth-shattering processes that operate deep beneath the surface? The fact that it does reflects a failure of our imagination and a limited understanding of the manner in which the different physical components of our planet – the atmosphere, the oceans, and the solid Earth, or geosphere – intertwine and interact.

If we think about climate change at all, most of us do so in a very simplistic way: so, the weather might get a bit warmer; floods and droughts may become more of a problem and sea levels will slowly creep upwards. Evidence reveals, however, that our planet is an almost unimaginably complicated beast, which reacts to a dramatically changing climate in all manner of different ways; a few – like the aforementioned – straightforward and predictable; some Read more…

Categories: Climate Change, Coming Events, Earth, Earth changes Tags: , , , , ,

Major storms set to increase

February 13, 2012 Leave a comment

tgdaily.com

by Kate Taylor

So-called ‘storms of the century’ like last August’s Hurricane Irene could become almost commonplace, thanks to climate change.

A team from MIT and Princeton University says that such storms could make landfall far more frequently, causing powerful, devastating storm surges every three to 20 years.

The group simulated tens of thousands of storms under different climate conditions, and concluded that the sort of severe floods which now hit every five hundred years or so could, with climate change, start happening once every 25 to 240 years.

MIT postdoc Ning Lin says that planners should take the findings into account when designing seawalls and other protective structures.

“When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be,” Lin says. “You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

To simulate present and future storm activity, using New York City as a case study, the researchers combined four Read more…

Categories: Coming Events, world Tags: , , , , ,

Australian state of Queensland stages its biggest ever evacuation as floodwaters rise

February 6, 2012 Leave a comment

globalpost.com

An aeriel view of the swollen Balonne River in Queensland is seen just before water levels peaked at 12.75 metres (42 feet) on Jan. 4, 2011. The river is now threatening to reach new highs, devastating the township of St George. AFP/Getty Images

MELBOURNE (Australia) – Thousands of people have been evacuated from the parts of the eastern Australian state of Queensland, where river heights are threatening to reach record levels, local media report.
Over 2,000 people were forcibly evacuated from the inland township of St George on Saturday night, in what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation says was the largest evacuation in the state’s history.


The Australian newspaper says the nearby Balonne River has already passed the all-time high of 13.4 metres (44 feet) recorded during the devastating floods of 2010, and it is expected to continue rising to over 14 metres (46 feet).
The newspaper says that some 300 to 400 residents had stayed to protect their properties, ignoring warnings that rescue services might not be able to reach them later. Some had built a temporary levee in an attempt to hold back some of the water, but the state Premier Anna Bligh said their efforts had “no prospect” of succeeding. Twenty houses were destroyed over the weekend and a final evacuation was scheduled for Monday morning, local time.
“This is the third flood this town has coped with in just less than two years, so there’s a lot of distress and a lot of emotion,” Bligh added, confirming that she would visit the flood-affected areas on Monday.
Later on Monday morning, some media began reporting that Read more…

Categories: Australia, Flood Tags: , , , ,

Floods create ‘inland sea’ in Australia

February 3, 2012 Leave a comment

rawstory.com

New South Wales flooding via AFP
 SYDNEY — Major flooding hit parts of Australia’s east on Friday, stranding thousands of residents, prompting a military airlift and leaving some communities only accessible by helicopter.

The deluge, which has sparked dozens of rescues and left about 7,275 people isolated in various parts of New South Wales state has also impacted Queensland to the north where homes have reportedly been inundated.

“From the air it looks like an inland sea,” New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell said after visiting the region.

Evacuations have been ordered from some houses and businesses in the New South Wales town of Moree, where more than 600 people have registered with an evacuation shelter as the Mehi River peaked, the State Emergency Service said.

“The town of Moree is inundated with water — so north Moree is not only cut off, but Read more…

Categories: Australia, Flood Tags: , , , ,

2011 Was A Year of Weather Extremes, With More to Come

February 2, 2012 Leave a comment

treehugger.com

The global average temperature in 2011 was 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.14 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the ninth warmest year in 132 years of recordkeeping, despite the cooling influence of the La Niña atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern and relatively low solar irradiance. Since the 1970s, each subsequent decade has gotten hotter — and 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the twenty-first century.


© Earth Policy Institute

Each year’s average temperature is determined by a number of factors, including solar activity and the status of the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon. But heat-trapping gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, have become a dominant force, pushing the Earth’s climate out of its normal range. The planet is now close to 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than it was a century ago. Hidden within Read more…

Categories: 2011 Tags: , , , , , ,
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