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Al Arabiya
an hour ago
- Al Arabiya
Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc
The third-hottest July worldwide ended a string of record-breaking temperatures last month, but many regions were still devastated by extreme weather amplified by global warming, the European climate monitoring service said Thursday. Heavy rains flooded Pakistan and northern China; Canada, Scotland and Greece struggled to tame wildfires intensified by persistent drought; and many nations in Asia and Scandinavia recorded new average highs for the month. 'Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over,' Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. 'But that does not mean climate change has stopped,' he said. 'We continue to witness the effects of a warming world.' A misleading dip As in June, July showed a slight dip compared to the preceding two years, averaging 1.25 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850–1900) era. 2023 and 2024 warmed above that benchmark by more than 1.5C, which is the Paris Agreement target set in 2015 for capping the rise in global temperatures at relatively safe levels. That deceptively small increase has been enough to make storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather events far more deadly and destructive. 'We continued to witness the effect of a warming world in events such as extreme heatwaves and catastrophic floods in July,' Buontempo said. Last month, temperatures exceeded 50C in the Gulf, Iraq and — for the first time — Turkey, while torrential rains killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan. In Spain, more than a thousand deaths were attributed by a public institute to the heat in July, half as many as in the same period in 2024. The main source of the CO₂ driving up temperatures is well known: the burning of oil, coal and gas to generate energy. 'Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of impacts,' Buontempo said. Regional contrasts Global average temperatures are calculated using billions of satellite and weather readings, both on land and at sea, and the data used by Copernicus extends back to 1940. Even if July was milder in some places than in previous years, 11 countries experienced their hottest July in at least a half-century, including China, Japan, North Korea, Tajikistan, Bhutan, Brunei and Malaysia, according to AFP calculations. In Europe, Nordic countries saw an unprecedented string of hot days, including more than 20 days above 30C across Finland. More than half of Europe along with the Mediterranean region experienced the worst drought conditions in the first part of July since monitoring began in 2012, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO). In contrast, temperatures were below normal in North and South America, India and parts of Australia and Africa, as well as in Antarctica. Seas still overheating Last month was also the third-hottest July on record for sea surface temperatures. Locally, however, several ocean records for July were broken: in the Norwegian Sea, in parts of the North Sea, in the North Atlantic west of France and Britain. The extent of Arctic sea ice was 10 percent below average, the second lowest for a July in 47 years of satellite observations, virtually tied with the readings of 2012 and 2021. Diminishing sea ice is a concern not because it adds to sea levels, but because it replaces the snow and ice that reflect almost all the Sun's energy back into space with deep blue ocean, which absorbs it. Ninety percent of the excess heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans. In Antarctica, sea ice extent is the third lowest on record for this month.
Arab News
8 hours ago
- Arab News
Pakistan's deadly monsoon floods were worsened by global warming, study finds
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Heavy rainfall that triggered floods in Pakistan in recent weeks, killing hundreds of people, was worsened by human-caused climate change, according to a new study. The study by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who study global warming's role in extreme weather, found that rainfall from June 24 to July 23 in the South Asian nation was 10 percent to 15 percent heavier because of climate change, leading to many building collapses in urban and rural Pakistan. Pakistan's government has reported at least 300 deaths and 1,600 damaged houses due to the floods, heavy rain and other weather since June 26. Saqib Hassan, a 50-year-old businessman in northern Pakistan, said flooding on July 22 destroyed his home and 18 of his relatives' homes, along with their dairy farms. His farm animals were washed away, resulting in heavy losses — likely 100 million rupees ($360,000) — for him and his family. Last-minute announcements from a nearby mosque were the only warning they got to evacuate their homes in the small town of Sarwarabad and get to higher ground. 'We are homeless now. Our houses have been destroyed. All the government has given us is food rations worth 50,000 rupees ($177) and seven tents, where we've been living for the past two weeks,' Hassan told The Associated Press over the phone. Heavy rains cause series of disasters High temperatures and intense precipitation worsened by global warming have accelerated the pace of recent extreme weather events faster than climate experts expected, said Islamabad-based climate scientist Jakob Steiner, who was not part of the WWA study. 'In the last few weeks, we have been scrambling to look at the number of events, not just in Pakistan, but in the South Asian region that have baffled us,' he said. 'Many events we projected to happen in 2050 have happened in 2025, as temperatures this summer, yet again, have been far above the average,' said Steiner, a geoscientist with the University of Graz, Austria, who studies water resources and associated risks in mountain regions. Heavy monsoon rains have resulted in a series of disasters that have battered South Asia, especially the Himalayan mountains, which span across five countries, in the last few months. Overflowing glacial lakes resulted in flooding that washed away a key bridge connecting Nepal and China, along with several hydropower dams in July. Earlier this week, a village in northern India was hit by floods and landslides, killing at least four people and leaving hundreds missing. The authors of the WWA study, which was released early Thursday, said that the rainfall they analyzed in Pakistan shows that climate change is making floods more dangerous. Climate scientists have found that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can make rain more intense. 'Every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall, highlighting why a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is so urgent,' said Mariam Zachariah, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and lead author of the WWA study. Extreme weather's impact on Pakistan Even though Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, research shows that it incurs an outsized amount of damage from extreme weather. Pakistan witnessed its most devastating monsoon season in 2022, with floods that killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage. According to the United Nations, global funds set up to deal with loss and damages because of climate change or funds set up to adapt to climate change are falling well short of the amounts needed to help countries like Pakistan deal with climate impacts. The UN warns that its loss and damage fund only holds a fraction of what's needed to address yearly economic damage related to human-caused climate change. Similarly, UN reports state that developed countries such as the United States and European nations, which are responsible for the largest chunk of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, are providing far less than what's needed in adaptation financing. These funds could help improve housing and infrastructure in areas vulnerable to flooding. The WWA report says much of Pakistan's fast-growing urban population lives in makeshift homes, often in flood-prone areas. The collapsing of homes was the leading cause of the 300 deaths cited in the report, responsible for more than half. 'Half of Pakistan's urban population lives in fragile settlements where floods collapse homes and cost lives,' said Maja Vahlberg of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, who also helped author the WWA report, in a press statement. 'Building flood-resilient houses and avoiding construction in flood zones will help reduce the impacts of heavy monsoon rain.'
Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Al Arabiya
Monsoon peaks in south China, unleashing landslides and disease
Rescue crews raced on Wednesday to clear debris and flooded roads as southern China braced for more extreme rainfall and the spread of infection after some of the worst downpours this century, as East Asian monsoon rains peaked. Forecasters warned of more thunderstorms after the second-heaviest August rains this century pounded Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, forcing Baiyun airport—one of the world's busiest—to cancel 363 flights and delay 311. The day before, skies above Hong Kong and the high-tech cities of China's Pearl River Delta turned livid and dumped the heaviest August rainfall since 1884 on the Asian financial center. Rescue crews in Guangdong scrambled to open drains and pump water away from urban areas, state media said, as the intense rain set off mudslides and felled trees on highways, tearing away road surfaces to expose cabling and other infrastructure. Video images showed roads transformed into brown waterways, threatening to worsen a major outbreak of Chikungunya, fueled by mosquitoes thriving in stagnant flood water. The outbreak had been on a downtrend before the latest rains. Guangdong had reported more than 7,000 virus infections earlier. China has endured weeks of atmospheric chaos since July, battered by downpours heavier than usual as the East Asian monsoon stalled over both the north and south. Weather experts link the shifting pattern to climate change, testing officials as flash floods displace thousands and threaten billions of dollars in economic losses. On Tuesday, Beijing allocated more than 1 billion yuan (USD 139 million) in disaster relief for Guangdong, the northern province of Hebei, the capital Beijing, and the northern region of Inner Mongolia, according to state news agency Xinhua. The aid includes subsidies for damage to grain-growing areas. Extreme rainfall swept at least five people to their deaths in Guangdong over the weekend, triggering a large-scale search effort by more than 1,300 rescuers. Sixteen rivers across Guangdong are threatening to breach their banks, with water levels at two sites reaching their highest since 2017 and 2018. The worst may be yet to come, with two to three typhoons expected to strike in August, emergency management authorities warned Tuesday. Disease outbreak The city of Foshan, west of Guangzhou, has been the epicenter of the province's Chikungunya outbreak, while at least a dozen other locations have reported infections. The disease typically causes fever and severe joint pain, though deaths are rare. The next few weeks are especially daunting for disease prevention and control, say provincial authorities, as the flood season—worsened by typhoons and heavy rain—has boosted mosquito activity. Spread by the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes, global infections of the disease number at least 240,000 this year.
