Eye On:
Floods, Fire, Landslides, and Drought: The Guardian's “Weather Crisis 2010”
Monday, August 16, 2010
From the Guardian’s DataBlog comes an excellent overview of some of the extreme weather affecting the globe this summer, from the devastating floods in Pakistan which have inflicted “huge losses” to crops and exacerbated an already tenuous security situation, to the wildfires in Russia which have smothered the capital in dangerous smog and crippled domestic wheat supplies.
“Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago,” writes author and graphic artist Mark McCormick.
The orange areas of the map represent high pressure systems and the blue, low pressure systems, which as explained by Peter Stott of the Met Office, are important indicators of the rare climatic conditions that caused this summer’s abnormal conditions across Eurasia.
The flooding in Pakistan has garnered the most international attention, having now affected more people than the 2004 tsunami, 2010 Haiti earthquake, and 2005 Kashmir earthquake combined. Other highlighted areas of the map include flooding in Poland and Germany, drought in England, mudslides in Latin and South America, record-breaking drought and hunger in West Africa, and flooding and landslides in China, which recently pushed the world's largest hydroelectric dam to its limit and have now been blamed for more than 1,000 deaths.
Although it does a good job highlighting the frequency and severity of extreme weather events this summer, it’s important to note that the map only covers events in July and August. That leaves out the “1000-year” floods in Tennessee this May as well as the heavy snowfall seen in the Northeast United States and the winter of “white death” in Mongolia earlier this year, which also severely disrupted local and national infrastructure as well as a great many people's livelihoods.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, BBC, Guardian, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, New York Times, Telegraph, UN Dispatch.
Image Credit: “Weather Crisis 2010” by Mark McCormick, courtesy of Scribd user smfrogers and The Guardian.
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9 comments:
It is apparent that our earth’s climate is changing, as is evident in the environmental disasters occurring with increased frequency. The question is whether these changes are occurring naturally through our planets lifecycle or whether our actions across the globe are accelerating this process?
This article makes me wonder if these chain of events taking place recently are merely a coincidence or a warning sign that we should pay attention to. The Day After Tomorrow anyone?
The question I have is how long will the earth be sustainable if we continue to emit and practice our destructive ways? I also feel global warming may be sensationalized, is this really a serious issue facing our planet or a media/celebrity ploy for attention?
Clearly, we are not properly prepared to handle the extremes in any situation. Regardless of whether or not the events noted (along with those not noted) are caused by humans, earths life cycle, or a combination of both, we continue to fail at risk projection and mitigation at a societal level. We need to work on that along side the research towards finding the source of the problem.
The NYTimes has a pretty good rundown on the popular question of "climate change or coincidence?" in the context of this summer's events. In short, it's nearly impossible to attribute any single event to climate change, but the kind of things that happened this summer are exactly what scientists have warned about.
Matt is on to something though in pointing out that when it comes to adapting in the short term, it doesn't much matter the source of these problems - it's still a problem we have to face.
Long-term mitigation is a different story and people in the field are certainly working hard on it.
Adapting to these events, short term or long term, will be the biggest challenge whatever their source. Many of these global weather disasters are occurring in areas which cannot respond effectively due to poor infrastructure. These events could prove to be a test, demonstrating how well we can respond as a global system and work together in an effort to mitigate the ensuing climate changes.
Indeed, and in countries like Pakistan where development and stability are strong domestic and international goals, it suggests that long term approaches to lowering vulnerability, increasing resilience and improving infrastructure and governance (hardware and software so to speak) are absolutely essential. Still hard to fathom the damage done by the floods however and how far back this puts an already challenged situation.
has there been any discussion as to the impact of this extream weather? This article mentions the flooding in Pakistan. If we use that as an example, is the weather palying a seginificant role in the political situations around the world? The flooding in Pakistan has undoubtedly placed significant stress on both the population and its government. Providing an oppertunity for the government to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the population as it strugles to provide relief from this natural disaster. Un-happy people never leads a comefortable political climate. Is there any evidence of this happening elsewhere?
Good question AjC. There are certainly cases of extreme climatic conditions in unstable parts of the world (the droughts in West Africa, mentioned above, are another case in point). I think most in the field would agree that extreme climate changes can (but do not always) cause instability, but because conflict is always caused by a myriad of factors, there's an intense ongoing discussion about the exact link between climate and the probability of armed violence.
See Marc Levy's critique of a recent academic paper on the subject for a sample of some of the competing schools of thought (be sure to read the comments too).
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