(Paris) Global warming has “probably” aggravated the extreme rainfall that caused catastrophic floods in Pakistan, highlighting the vulnerability of its population to the aggravated risks of such cataclysms, according to a World Weather Attribution study unveiled Thursday .
Posted yesterday at 5:08 p.m.
“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 WWA researchers, a network of pioneering scientists in the assessment of the impact of global warming on the intensity and probability of extreme weather events.
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.
For this study, scientists used weather data and “31 different computer models” 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 5-day rainfall totals in Sindh and Balochistan by up to 50%,” during the peak experienced by these two southern provinces which received “seven and eight times the normal rainfall”.
The scientists also analyzed the 60 days of heaviest monsoon rainfall in the entire Indus basin, between June and September, but the modeling “had large uncertainties”.
“Current models are not fully capable of simulating the rains” in this region “at the western limit of the monsoon” and whose precipitation is “extremely variable from one year to another”, they analyzed.
Therefore, “scientists have not been able to estimate the influence of climate change on this aspect”.
However, “what we have seen in Pakistan corresponds exactly to what climate projections have predicted for years,” said Friederike Otto of Imperial College London during a press briefing.
Ayesha Siddiqi, a geographer at the University of Cambridge, listed the factors aggravating the disaster, in particular the design and deficient management of rivers, dykes and dams, from the colonial period, as well as the lack of prevention and uncontrolled urbanization.
“It is essential, for a full understanding of this catastrophe, to view it as the product of historical processes of vulnerability and inequities in the Indus Basin, rather than the result of a single weather event,” said she declared.
For Fahad Saeed, a researcher in Islamabad, “Pakistan must ask developed countries to take responsibility and provide adaptation assistance, as well as loss and damage support, to the most vulnerable countries and populations. affected by climate change”.