Global warming has “most likely” worsened the extreme rainfall that caused catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, according to a World Weather Attribution study released on Thursday (September 15th). Nearly 1,400 people have died since June in the floods, which have drowned a third of Pakistan, affected around 33 million people and caused more than $30 billion in damage.
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“Extreme rainfall in the region has increased by 50-75% and some models suggest that this increase could be entirely due to human-induced climate change, although the results have considerable uncertainties”conclude the researchers from the WWA, a network of scientists who are pioneers in assessing the impact of global warming on the intensity and probability of extreme weather events.
For this study, the scientists used weather data and “31 different models” computers to compare the current climate with that of the pre-industrial era, 1.2°C cooler than today. According to their findings, “some models suggest that climate change has increased total 5-day rainfall by up to 50% in Sindh and Balochistan”during the peak experienced by these two southern provinces which received in August “seven and eight times the normal rainfall”.
Scientists also analyzed the 60 days of heaviest monsoon rainfall in the entire Indus basin, between June and September, but modeling “presented great uncertainties”. “Current models are not fully capable of simulating rainfall” in this region “at the western limit of the monsoon” and whose precipitation is “extremely variable from year to year”, they analyzed. Therefore, “scientists have not been able to estimate the influence of climate change on this aspect”.
Nevertheless, “what we have seen in Pakistan is exactly what climate projections have predicted for years”, underlined during a press briefing Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London. For Fahad Saeed, researcher in Islamabad, “Pakistan must call on developed countries to take responsibility and provide adaptation assistance, as well as loss and damage support, to the countries and people most affected by climate change”.
Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions (for 3% of the world’s population), but it is in 8th position of the countries most threatened by extreme weather phenomena, according to a study by the Germanwatch NGO. These emissions, produced by the consumption of coal, oil or gas for transport, food, housing or industry, are the main cause of global warming.