Crisis of Too Much Water
13 August 2019
The June to September rainy season is vital for agriculture and for the replenishment of water reserves, but the heavy rains also do a great deal of harm each year.
In the second half of July, at least 650 people lost their lives in the monsoon rains in Southern Asia. More than 10 million people were at risk in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, floods destroyed tens of thousands of homes and one third of Bangladesh was flooded.
In India, a country of 1.3 billion people, at least 460 deaths have been reported in recent weeks. A disaster management official has reported that in a single day, 37 people were hit by lightning in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On 25 July, seven hundred people had to be rescued from a flood by helicopter and rescue boats from an express train near Mumbai.
The situation is also catastrophic in the north of Vietnam, where the rain and floods caused by Typhoon Wipha has cost a number of lives. In the district of Quan Son, an entire village was
destroyed by the flood.
Typhoon Wipha hit the coast on 1 August in Quand Ninh province, home of the UNESCO World Heritage site Halong Bay and the neighbouring city of Haiphong. Around 800 soldiers from the army and national militia have been deployed to assist with disaster relief.
Source: MTI – Hungarian News Agency
“Ice is the canary in the global coal mine. It’s the place where we can see and touch and hear and feel climate change in action.” Internationally recognised nature photographer James Balog believes it is extremely important to pay attention to the processes underway in the polar regions.
Rising sea levels caused by climate change and global warming are an increasing threat to the Netherlands, so the Dutch have started using an innovative device, a storm surge barrier to protect against them. The world’s largest storm surge barrier was built in the south of the country, at Maeslantkering.
The melting of glaciers has broken new records in Switzerland this year; they lost two percent of their ice mass this summer, while over the last five years, they have lost 10 percent of their volume altogether, which is unprecedented in the existing records spanning over 100 years.
The typhoon raging in Japan has claimed more than fifty lives; the number of injured has exceeded two hundred.
As a result of climate change, humanity is expected to face growing numbers of destructive storms in the future.
The rising sea levels and melting permafrost caused by climate change are causing crisis situations in a number of places around the world, resulting in tens of thousands of people having to leave their homes, while important agricultural areas also fall victim to the changes.
Climate change is causing severe problems in Antarctica, too: recently, a piece of ice weighing 315 billion tonnes broke off the area, while scientists investigating satellite images covering an area of 5 million square kilometres found tens of thousands of meltwater lakes, which indicates severe problems.
Massive snowstorms hit a number of north-western and northern states of the USA on 29 September.
Monsoon rain accompanied by storms and lightning hit the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India on 27 September. Tempestuous winds toppled trees and utility poles and tore off roofs, killing more than a hundred people.
On 24 September, the Fondazione Montagna Sicura (Safe Mountain Foundation) issued an avalanche warning on the Planpincieux Glacier, which is located on the eastern slope of the Grandes Jorasses peak.
