Monsoon rains fill India reservoir to capacity – Kerala’s Idukki Dam floodgates may be opened after 26 years, forcing large-scale evacuation downriver

By Chennabasaveshwar 4 August 2018Idukki, 4 August 2018 (Oneindia News) – The water level in Kerala’s Idukki dam touched 2396.34 feet on Saturday due to continuous heavy rainfall. The Full Reservoir Level (FRL) of the dam is 2403 feet.Idukki Dam is 554 feet (168.91 meters) tall, constructed between the two mountains – Kuravanmala (839 meters) […]

UN migration agency tackles floods and landslides to support Rohingya refugees during monsoon

Cox’s Bazar, 27 July 2018 (IOM) – UN Migration Agency (IOM) staff have been working round the clock this week, as monsoon downpours caused flooding and landslides in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, where almost one million people are living in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters after fleeing violence in Myanmar. IOM health teams waded through […]

Storms, landslides, and extreme heat hit Asia – More than 900,000 people evacuated in China and the Philippines

By Sandi Sidhu and Susannah Cullinane 22 July 2018 (CNN) – Extreme weather is striking parts of Asia with deadly flash-flooding in Vietnam, a tropical storm prompting evacuations and disrupting travel in China and an ongoing heat wave in Japan.In Vietnam, 21 people have died and more people are missing after Tropical Depression Son Tinh […]

Early rains expose risks for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, warns UN agency – “The worst is yet to come when cyclone and monsoon seasons hit in the coming weeks”

20 April 2018 (UN News) – The arrival of pre-monsoon rains in southern Bangladesh has revealed an alarming level of risks for Rohingya refugees, United Nations humanitarian agencies said on Friday, warning that they do not  have the funds needed to protect hundreds of thousands of desperate people once the rainy season begins in earnest.“The […]

Closed-door policies imperil climate migrants – “There are areas of the world that are getting degraded, and if we do nothing, they will become uninhabitable”

By Justine Calma 5 February 2018 (Grist) – The unprecedented brutality of the 2017 hurricane season showed the potential that natural disasters have to destroy livelihoods, displace families, and uproot entire communities. The most recent example, of course, is the situation in Puerto Rico post-Maria. Experts estimate the U.S. territory will lose close to 500,000 […]

Munich Re: Series of hurricanes makes 2017 year of highest insured losses ever – “Our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often in future”

4 January 2018 (Munich Re) – The hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma, and Maria will cost the insurance industry a record amount in 2017: the final insurance bill for those and other natural catastrophes, including a severe earthquake in Mexico, is expected to come to US$ 135bn – higher than ever before. And overall losses […]

World Meteorological Organization: 2017 likely to be in top 3 hottest years on record

6 November 2017 (WMO) – It is very likely that 2017 will be one of the three hottest years on record, with many high-impact events including catastrophic hurricanes and floods, debilitating heatwaves and drought. Long-term indicators of climate change such as increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, sea level rise and ocean acidification continue unabated. Arctic sea […]

Video: The unsung heroes of the 2017 Mumbai flood – Thousands of migrant workers are employed by the BMC for the pre-monsoon cleanup every year. But they are made to work illegally in inhumane conditions.

By Madhura Chakraborty and Amol Lalzare 15 September 2017(Video Volunteers) – “They don’t touch us because our hands and feet are dirty. They say we stink. They yell at us, hit us, ask us to go away.” Nana Kale recounts how he is treated after working at his job: cleaning the sewers of Mumbai, before […]

Leaders meeting at U.N. underscore need to fast-track climate action – “It is here, now, and we need to deal with it”

19 September 2017 (United Nations) – Leaders from various levels of government, the private sector and civil society highlighted the need for climate action as they convened at United Nations Headquarters, where Secretary-General António Guterres warned that current pledges and plans are insufficient to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees. “Hurricanes Harvey […]

Will Hurricane Irma finally change the way we talk about climate?

By David Wallace-Wells 9 September 2017 (New York Magazine) – For decades, a kind of market logic has governed the way we talk about global warming, emanating from the moderate right: Climate change may well be real, the Chamber of Commerce types say, but the need for economic growth is much more urgent and climate […]

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