flood – Page 5 – Desdemona Despair

Churchgoers leave Sunday morning service in Kioa, Fiji. Photo: Andrew Quilty / The Guardian

December 3, 2023

Australia offers refuge to Tuvaluans as rising sea levels threaten Pacific archipelago – “We are sinking, but so is everyone else”

By Pauline Rouquette 11 November 2023 (France24) – Canberra announced on Friday that it is offering climate refuge to Tuvaluans, unveiling the terms of a pact that would enable citizens of the 26-square kilometre archipelago – the fourth smallest state in the world – to move to Australia to “live, study and work”. Located near […]

Dilshad Bano, 51, sits on the floor near her house which was damaged after a Glacial Lake Outburst Flooding (GLOF) incident, in Hassanabad village, Pakistan, 9 October 2023 Photo: Akhtar Soomro / REUTERS

December 2, 2023

Mountain villages fight for future as melting glaciers threaten floods – “Until 1978, this whole place was a glacier. The pool of water came later.”

By Charlotte Greenfield 22 November 2023 (Reuters) – On the steep slope of a glacier jutting through the Hunza valley in Pakistan’s mountainous far north, Tariq Jamil measures the ice’s movement and snaps photos. Later, he creates a report that includes data from sensors and another camera installed near the Shisper glacier to update his […]

Map of ensemble mean trends in ocean temperature and ice-shelf basal melting in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) for the Paris 2°C scenario. Temperature is averaged over the depth range 200–700 m. Trends are calculated at each point using annually averaged fields from 2006–2100. White regions indicate no significant trend. The Amundsen Sea region visualized here (latitude–longitude projection) is outlined in red in the inset map of Antarctica (polar stereographic projection). The black dashed line shows the 1,750 m depth contour of the continental shelf break and the blue dashed line outlines the continental shelf region used for analysis. Labels denote ice shelves (G, Getz; D, Dotson; Cr, Crosson; T, Thwaites; P, Pine Island; Co, Cosgrove; A, Abbot). Graphic: Naughten, et al., 2023 / Nature

November 10, 2023

The climate contradiction that will sink us – “We already have a refugee crisis; I shudder to think what would happen if everyone living within two meters of sea level would be displaced.”

By Zoë Schlanger 10 November 2023 (The Atlantic) – You’d be forgiven for thinking that the fight against climate change is finally going well. The clean-energy revolution is well under way and exceeding expectations. Solar is set to become the cheapest form of energy in most places by 2030, and the remarkable efficiency of heat pumps is driving their own uptake […]

Flood waters ripple through an orchard of dead and dying pistachio trees in Tulare Lake. Photo: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

October 30, 2023

Heat, drought, floods, bad air: Will California’s Central Valley survive climate change? “It’s almost like the forecast for the middle, late century – we’re seeing it right now”

By Hayley Smith 25 October 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – One March morning in the small Central Valley town of Woodlake, Joshua Diaz was getting out of bed when he noticed that his carpet was bubbling and that his tile floor had grown slick. He tried to open his front door but felt pressure and […]

Satellite view of burned area and wildfires in Greece, 19 August 2023 - 14 September 2023. More than 672 square miles had burned through September 2023. Photo: European Union / Copernicus Sentinel / EO Browser

October 9, 2023

Two months of fire and flood: Greece’s climate disasters in 2023, visualized – “An unprecedented weather event, a catastrophe of immense proportions”

By Mithil Aggarwal and Jiachuan Wu 8 October 2023 (NBC News) – Greece is at war with climate change. Wildfires and record rainfall devastated the country this summer, first scorching entire forests then flooding complete towns. Here’s a look at two months of disasters that will leave the country changed for years. The fires The blaze […]

Heavy rainfall caused catastrophic flooding in Derna, northeastern Libya, on 11 September 2023. Photo: AFP / Getty Images

September 30, 2023

Horrific Libya flooding made up to 50 times more likely by planet-warming pollution, scientists find – “Through these events we are already seeing how climate change and human factors can combine to create compounding and cascading impacts”

By Laura Paddison 19 September 2023 (CNN) – The deadly rainfall which caused catastrophic flooding and destruction in Libya, as well as other parts of the Mediterranean, this month was made much more likely and worse by the human-caused climate crisis, in addition to other human factors, according to a new scientific analysis [Interplay of climate change-exacerbated […]

Residents walk through floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, 29 September 2023. Photo: Mike Segar / REUTERS

September 30, 2023

New York City area gets one of its wettest days in decades, as rain floods subways and streets – “The sad reality is that our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond”

By Jake Offenhartz, Jennifer Peltz, and Bobby Caina Calvan 29 September 2023 NEW YORK (AP) – Rain walloped the New York metropolitan area with a startling punch Friday, knocking out several subway and commuter rail lines, stranding drivers on highways, flooding basements and shuttering a terminal at LaGuardia Airport for hours in one of the […]

Flood damage in the city of Derna, where the death toll from floods in eastern Libya on 11 September 2023 was expected to soar dramatically. Photo: AFP / Getty Images

September 12, 2023

Up to 10,000 people feared dead after “catastrophic” floods sweep Libya – “The bodies are still lying on the ground in many parts. Hospitals are filled with bodies. And there are areas we have yet to reach.”

By Patrick Smith 12 September 2023 (NBC News) – As many as 10,000 people are feared dead after a storm slammed into Libya, unleashing a devastating surge of floodwaters across the country’s east. A disaster wrought by intense rainfall from Mediterranean storm Daniel intensified when two dams burst — with more than 2,000 people killed in […]

A combination picture shows satellite images of Ozello, Florida before flooding (L) on 12 January 2023 and flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia in Florida, U.S., 30 August 2023. Photo: Maxar Technologies / REUTERS / CBS News

September 10, 2023

Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies as climate risks grow – “The same risks that are making insurance more important are making it harder to get”

By Jacob Bogage 3 September 2023 (The Washington Post) – In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most. At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — […]

Aerial view of the Panamanian island of Carti Sugdupu. Hundreds are preparing to leave the island in the face of rising sea levels. Photo: Luis Acosta

September 10, 2023

“We’re going to sink”: hundreds abandon Caribbean island home – “Almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century”

By Juan José Rodríguez 6 September 2023 (AFP) – On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes. Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama’s north coast has barely an […]