The extreme rainfall during the current monsoon was a “one-in-a-hundred” event that made Pakistan’s floods more intense, World Weather Attribution’s (WWA) study has said.
The study has also said that climate warming has made five-day maximum rainfall 75 percent more intense with more than 1,500 lives taken by floods.
World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international research collaboration that teases out the role of climate change in extreme events, has stated in its report that in the hardest areas of Sindh and Balochistan average five-day maximum rainfall was made 75 percent more intense due to the climate warming.
According to the report, the scientists have found that there was recorded 50 percent heavier rainfall across the entire Indus River basin. The study report was based upon 31 computer models combined with real-world observations.
It has also been said that the deadly heat wave in Pakistan and India, during March and April this year, had made it 30 times more likely with temperatures reaching 50 degree centigrade.
WWA co-leader Friederike Otto has also stated, “The role of climate change in heat waves is much larger than in extreme rainfall when it comes to likelihood.”
According to the scientists, there have been so many drivers behind this year’s extremes therefore it was trickier to parse out the role of climate change in Pakistan’s floods. The monsoon has been fed with the ongoing La Nina conditions. La Nina conditions, which is a global weather pattern affecting the temperatures of the ocean, have been combined with a negative dipole in the Indian Ocean.
