Hurricane Fiona unleashes “catastrophic” damage, Puerto Rico governor says

Satellite view of Hurricane Fiona at 1 p.m. on Monday, 19 September 2022. Photo: NOAA

September 19, 2022

Hurricane Fiona unleashes “catastrophic” damage, Puerto Rico governor says

By Arelis R. Hernández, Jason Samenow, Praveena Somasundaram, and Reis Thebault 19 September 2022 (The Washington Post) – Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Monday that Hurricane Fiona has caused “catastrophic” destruction in urban areas, killing at least one person and leaving nearly the entire island archipelago without power. The slow-moving Category 1 storm could drop upward […]

Number of U.S. real estate parcels with any area below boundary tideline in 2050 by state. Graphic: Climate Central

September 18, 2022

Rising seas threaten U.S. tax bases as private property falls below tidelines – Tidal flooding to swamp $34 billion in real estate within 30 years

PRINCETON, N.J., 8 September 2022 (Climate Central) – New analysis from Climate Central quantifies the risk of sea level rise to the tax bases of hundreds of coastal counties across 24 states and Washington, D.C. as more land falls beneath the tideline. By 2100 more than 1 million properties with a combined assessed value exceeding $108 billion are projected to be […]

Two men walk through rushing water on Front Street in Nome, Alaska, just a half block from the Bering Sea, on 17 September 2022. Photo: Peggy Fagerstrom / AP

September 18, 2022

Western Alaska confronts damage after historic storm – “Boats are going to be scattered all over the tundra”

By Taylor Telford 18 September 2022 (The Washington Post) – Floodwaters began receding in Alaska on Sunday, revealing the damage after the remnants of a typhoon lashed the state with its fiercest storm in years. The full extent of the storm’s impact may not be clear for days, but residents across the state’s low-lying western coast […]

Boat operators, who have come from miles around to work as ferrymen in submerged areas, use power lines as navigation landmarks in Dadu, Pakistan, on Tuesday, 13 September 2022. They have become a lifeline for residents who are trying to save the livestock and belongings that were not washed away by floodwaters. Photo: Kiana Hayeri / The New York Times

September 18, 2022

In Pakistan’s record floods, villages are now desperate islands – WHO warns of soaring water-borne diseases – “Even the goats are sick”

ISLAMABAD, 18 September 2022 (Press Trust of India) – The World Health Organisation has expressed fears about an impending second disaster of water-borne diseases in Pakistan in the wake of devastating floods that has wreaked havoc in several parts of the country. In a statement issued by the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the global health watchdog said that water supply […]

Daily surface air temperature anomaly for July 2022 relative to the daily average for the period 1991–2020. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

September 18, 2022

Europe’s hot summer of 2022 shatters records – “We’ve not only had record August temperatures for Europe but also for summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old”

By Matt McGrath 8 September 2022 (BBC News) – This summer was the hottest on record in Europe, according to data from EU satellite monitoring. A series of extreme heatwaves and a long running drought saw June, July and August shatter the previous high mark for temperature. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said the data showed August […]

Residents ride on a wooden boat as they pass submerged houses amid flood water, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Bajara village, at the banks of Manchar lake, in Sehwan, Pakistan 6 September 2022. Photo: Akhtar Soomro / REUTERS

September 7, 2022

Pakistan looks “like a sea” after floods, PM says, as 18 more die – “You wouldn’t believe the scale of destruction there”

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 7 September 2022 SEHWAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Parts of Pakistan seemed “like a sea”, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday, after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from […]

People make their way through a flooded area following heavy rains in Karachi, Pakistan on 24 August 2022. Photo: Shahzaib Akber / EPA 24 August 2022.

September 5, 2022

Pakistan struggles to avert danger as floods rise, death toll tops 1,300 – More than 400,000 pregnant women in Sindh province displaced by floods, only 891 have reached relief camps

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 5 September 2022 ISLAMABAD/KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent the country’s biggest lake bursting its banks and inundating nearby towns after unprecedented flooding, while the disaster management agency on Monday raised its toll of flood deaths by another 24. Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers […]

Children use rafts to make their way along a waterlogged street in a residential area after a heavy monsoon rainfall in Hyderabad on 24 August 2022. Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan's Climate Change Minister said August 24, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June 2022. Photo: Akram SHAHID / AFP

September 5, 2022

Sleepwalking to destruction: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes – “We just would not get temperatures as high as we’ve seen without human-caused climate change”

By Nick O’Malley 3 September 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Authorities are having difficulties finding the words to properly capture the devastation caused by the floods that have swept across Pakistan in recent days, killing more than 1400 people and displacing up to 50 million as water inundates about a third of the country. […]

Local residents cross a portion of road destroyed by floodwaters in Kalam Valley in northern Pakistan, Sunday, 4 September 2022. More than 1,300 people have died and millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. Photo: Sherin Zada / AP Photo

September 4, 2022

Pakistan floods villages to save a city – Damage estimated at $10 billion – “The scale of devastation is massive and requires an immense humanitarian response for 33 million people”

By Zarar Khan 4 September 2022 ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistani engineers cut into an embankment for one of the country’s largest lakes on Sunday to release rising waters in the hopes of saving a nearby city and town from flooding as officials predicted more monsoon rain was on the way for the country’s already devastated […]

Changes in global average sea level (background map) and local sea level (dots) between 1993 and 2021. In the global ocean, sea level has risen nearly everywhere (blue). Coastal areas where sea level has fallen (brown) are places where the land is rising as it rebounds from being compressed by ice sheets and glaciers during the last ice age. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from University of Hawaii Sea Level Center. Graphic: NOAA

September 4, 2022

American Meteorological Society report: Record-high greenhouse gases and sea levels in 2021 – Ocean heat content highest on record

31 August 2022 (NOAA) – Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea levels and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2021, according to the 32nd annual State of the Climate report. The international annual review of the world’s climate, led by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and published by the Bulletin of the […]

Desdemona Despair

Category: flood