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Heavy rains, frustrated by climate change, contribute to the death of at least 1,600 million people with the most displaced animals after Malaysia, according to a new report from World Weather.
“Monsoon rains are common in this part of the country. What is unusual is the increasing intensity of these storms and how they affect people’s lives,” said Sarah Kew, a meteorologist at the royal station.
“The combination of heavy rains and climate change is a deadly combination.”
Twenty-one scientists examine the factors behind deadly storms. In the case of typhoon Senzir over the Malacca Strait, they concluded that sea temperatures rose by 0.2 c in the northern Indian Ocean, adding heat and moisture to the storm.
Without the burning of fossil fuels, those temperatures would have been about 1 C cooler than the 30-year average, according to the report.
While the study cannot pinpoint the exact contribution of climate change due to limitations in climate models, it shows the potential for heavy rainfall, increased warming and the effects of other damaging environmental changes.
Storms in late November caused devastating floods, flooding of beaches and hospitals – and in some places, entire villages.
Incident in Sri Lanka
Residents in Mwathura, Sri Lanka, have been searching for survivors and cleaning up debris ever since. Nisankka Kumarage, a resident, said her community received a cyclone warning before it hit on the night of November 29; A loud noise woke him up at 2 a.m., but he didn’t notice anything unusual.
Later, Kumarage told Reuters, he saw part of the village completely disappear from the human settlement, burying many people.
“We’re still doing well,” he said.
The WWA analysis calculated that with the effects of climate warming, the chance of a storm this big is now 30 years. But it was the rain, more than the wind, that caused the most damage.
Early warnings have been issued in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, but many people do not understand the nature of the next storms.
“Tropical storms occur near the equator, so it’s not something we see very often,” said Clare Nullis with the Meteorological Society. “It means that the results are exaggerated because the local communities have no experience in this.”
In Gampaha, Sri Lanka, 40-year-old Malika Kumari told Reuters, “It’s been raining for three days. We heard about the flood warnings, but we didn’t expect the water levels to get this high.
“Everything is under water,” he said, standing in the flood waters.
The floods exceeded historical levels
The storm was formed by slow motion over a large part of the North Indian Ocean, said Lalith Rajapakse, a professor of engineering at the University of Moratuwa, one of the students involved in the WWA study.
“All of this contributed to a very heavy downpour, unprecedented.”
During the monsoon season, Rajapakse said it had exceeded historical levels. In some places, the water rises four meters so reaching the second floor cannot save people.
Heavy five-day rainfall events are forecast to be between 28 and 160 percent greater than in recent decades, according to WWA findings.
In SRI Lanka, the deforestation of the hills and the cities’ propensity for flooding meant that the storms spread to densely populated areas, taking out bridges and roads, damaging more than 277,000 buildings.
The first assessment of WWA suggests the economic loss of Sri Lanka in the amount of 5 to 5 percent of the national GDP, or $ 6 billion sent to $ 7 billion US. Indonesian authorities estimate their recovery costs will be more than $3 billion.
“This should be an eye opener to the scale of the future climate change the country and the region must prepare for,” said Rajapakse.
