by Islamabad, Pakistan (AP)-Heavy rainfall that has been activated in Pakistan in Pakistan in recent weeks, in which hundreds of people were killed, was aggravated by human being caused by humans, according to a new study.
The study by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who study the role of global warming in extreme weather, discovered that rainfall from June 24 to July 23 in the South Asian nation was 10% to 15% heavier due to climate change, which led to many collapses of buildings in urban and rural Pakistan.
The Pakistani government has reported at least 300 deaths and 1,600 damaged houses because of the floods, heavy rain and other weather since 26 June.
Saqib Hassan, a 50-year-old businessman in northern Pakistan, said that floods destroyed his house and 18 of the houses of his family members on July 22, together with their dairy farms. His farm animals were washed away, which resulted in heavy losses – probably 100 million rupees ($ 360,000) – for him and his family.
Last-minute announcements from a nearby mosque were the only warning they received to evacuate their houses in the small town of Sarwarabad and to come to higher ground.
“We are now homeless. Our houses have been destroyed. The entire government has given us that food rations have lived 50,000 rupees ($ 177) and seven tents worth the past two weeks,” Hassan told the Associated Press by telephone.
Heavy rainfall causes a series of disasters
High temperatures and intense precipitation worse due to global warming have accelerated the pace of recent extreme weather conditions faster than the expected climate experts, said the climate scientist Jakob Steiner, established in the Islamabad, who was not part of the WWA study.
“In the past few weeks we have looked to look at the number of events, not only in Pakistan, but in the South Asian region that we have stunned,” he said.
“Many events that we would be expected to happen in 2050 happened in 2025 because the temperature this summer, again, have been far above the average,” said Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz, Austria, who studies water supplies and associated risks in mountain areas.
Heavy monsoon rains have resulted in a series of disasters that have battered South Asia, especially the Himalaya -Bergen, which have extended over five countries in recent months.
Flowing glacier lakes resulted in floods that washed away an important bridge that connected Nepal and China, together with various hydroelectric dams in July. Earlier this week, a village in Noord -India was hit by floods and landslides, in which at least four people were killed and hundreds of missing.
The authors of the WWA study, which was released on Thursday at the beginning of Thursday, said the rainfall they analyzed in Pakistan, demonstrates that climate change makes floods more dangerous. Climate scientists have discovered that a warmer atmosphere contains more moisture, which can make rain more intense.
“Every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall, and emphasizes 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 main author of the WWA study.
Extreme weather impact on Pakistan
Although Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the planet -warming gases in the atmosphere, research shows that it is a large amount of damage due to extreme weather. Pakistan witnessed the 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 tackle with loss and damage because of climate change or funds set up to adapt to climate change are well short for the amounts needed to help countries such as Pakistan deal with climate effects. The UN warns that the loss and damage fund only a fraction of what is needed to tackle annual economic damage with regard to climate change caused by humans.
Similarly, UN reports argue that developed countries such as the United States and European countries, which are responsible for most of the planet-warming gases in the atmosphere, offer much less than what is necessary for adjustment financing.
These funds can help improve housing and infrastructure in areas that are vulnerable to floods.
The WWA report says that many of the fast-growing urban population of Pakistan lives in improvised houses, often in flood-sensitive areas. The collapse of houses was the main cause of the 300 deaths in the report, responsible for more than half.
“Half of the urban population of Pakistan lives in fragile settlements where floods collapse and lives cost,” said Maja Vahlberg of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, which also helped with the author of the WWA report, in a press statement. “Building flood -oprescience houses and avoiding construction in flood zones will help reduce the effects of heavy monsoon rain.”
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Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India.
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Follow Sibi Arasu on X on @Sibi123
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