Tag: climate

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Extreme weather and climate events heighten humanitarian needs in Madagascar and around the world – Madagascar

Extreme weather and climate events heighten humanitarian needs in Madagascar and around the world - Madagascar

ANTANANARIVO – Tropical Cyclone Emnati that made landfall in Madagascar on Wednesday, the fourth tropical storm in as many weeks to hit one of Africa’s most storm-prone countries, threatens food security and is an example of how weather extremes will trigger runaway humanitarian needs if we do not tackle the climate crisis, warns the United Nations World Food Programme just days ahead of the launch of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Crashing into vulnerable communities already at breaking point, Cyclone Emnati is bound to deepen hunger including in southern Madagascar, which has been reeling from years of severe drought – another manifestation of the country’s vulnerability to climate extremes. Given how dry the land is in these areas, there are now concerns regarding the risk of flash floods.

The storms – Emnati, Dumako, Batsirai and Ana – have wrecked the island nation, causing widespread damage to agricultural land including the rice crop that was just weeks away from harvest. Cash crops like cloves, coffee and pepper have also been severely affected. In a country where the majority of people make a living from agriculture, an estimated 90 percent of crops could be destroyed in some areas of affected regions. The back-to-back storms have impacted market supplies with the potential to send food prices soaring and food insecurity spiralling in the coming months. Forecasts predict another tropical system already forming in the south-west Indian ocean.

“What we are seeing in Madagascar is extreme climate impacts – a series of storms and prolonged drought affecting hundreds of thousands of people,” said Brian Lander, WFP’s Deputy Director of Emergencies. “While WFP is providing essential food in the aftermath of the storms, we need to be equally fast in thinking about how these communities are going to adapt to this new reality.”

As it did to alleviate the impacts of the other recent storms, WFP has stepped up to support the government-led response to Emnati with food and cash assistance, prioritizing displaced families in the worst-off locations as well as with IT and logistics support. The WFP-run United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) is operating damage-assessment flights and an airbridge between the capital, Antananarivo, and hard-hit, hard-to-reach areas for aid workers and their equipment.

While WFP is in a race against time to assist those affected, our longer-term climate adaptation work helps communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from climate shocks and stresses. For example, WFP’s integrated risk management in the districts of Ambovombe and Amboasary last year reached 3,500 smallholder farmers with insurance, savings and climate-adapted agriculture practices training. The programme saw a US$350,000 payout during the rainy season and a US$157,500 payout during the dry season in 2021. Such programmes need to be scaled up, especially for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

The world over, the climate crisis continues to drive global hunger. In 2020, extreme weather contributed to most of the world’s food crises and was the primary cause of acute food insecurity in 15 countries. WFP’s effective and scalable solutions, especially in fragile environments, help vulnerable communities adapt to the harsh reality of the climate crisis and preserve development gains.

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The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

Follow us on Twitter @wfp_media and @wfp_africa

Contact
For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org):

Alice Rahmoun, WFP/ Madagascar.
Tel. +261 32 23 633 57 / +33 6 72 19 48 52 (WhatsApp)

Isheeta Sumra, WFP/ Rome,
Mob. +39 3471814398

Claudia Altorio, WFP/Johannesburg,
Mob. +27 829081448

Tomson Phiri, WFP/ Geneva,
Mob. +41 79 842 8057

Nina Valente, WFP/ London,
Mob. +44 (0)796 8008 474

Martin Rentsch, WFP/Berlin,
Mob +49 160 99 26 17 30

Shaza Moghraby, WFP/New York,
Mob. + 1 929 289 9867

Steve Taravella, WFP/ Washington,
Mob. +1 202 770 5993

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B.C. climate change initiative needs to look further than recovery, expert says

B.C. climate change initiative needs to look further than recovery, expert says

VICTORIA — A disaster expert who led recovery teams after the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 230,000 people says British Columbia’s climate response strategy must protect the province from future environmental events

VICTORIA — A disaster expert who led recovery teams after the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 230,000 people says British Columbia’s climate response strategy must protect the province from future environmental events.

The B.C. government introduced a plan this week that recognizes the forces of climate change are driving threats facing communities, but the province must do more than implement recovery programs, said Prof. Jean Slick, who heads the disaster and emergency management program at Royal Roads University in Victoria.

“B.C. is a leader in being able to come out so directly in addressing the whole issue of recognizing how climate change is interwoven with the kinds of threats we face, in particular flood and fire,” she said in an interview.

However, she said the human element that shouldn’t be missed is that governments are allowing people to build on flood plains or in fire zones. 

“What we really want to see going forward is that we take action to stop creating disaster risks.”

Finance Minister Selina Robinson said the B.C. budget tabled this week includes $2.1 billion to fund disaster recovery efforts and future responses to the threats posed by wildfires, floods, and heat waves.

The three-year climate fund will support ongoing disaster cleanup and rebuilding in southern B.C. communities hit by last November’s floods and mudslides, she said.

The heavy rains resulted in floods that deluged farming operations in the Fraser Valley, forced evacuations in Merritt and Princeton and crippled major rail and highway routes.

The village of Lytton was destroyed last June in a fire that occurred the day after the village posted the highest temperature in Canadian history. 

Robinson and three other New Democrat cabinet ministers attended a news conference Thursday to provide more details of climate recovery and response initiatives funded in the budget.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said Emergency Program Act funding will increase to $436 million from $36 million to support flood recovery costs and response activities that include debris removal, cleanup and dike repairs.

The BC Wildfire Service will become a year-round firefighting and risk mitigation operation that will add people and equipment to focus on prevention and response services in wildfires and other emergencies, he said.

The climate strategy also includes a $120-million community emergency preparedness fund to assist communities and First Nations with emergency preparedness and mitigation, said Farnworth. 

“It’s also important to note that the challenges we’ve faced over the recent years, the consecutive wildfires and flooding events and the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted Indigenous communities and it is critical we work side-by-side and in partnership with First Nations to advance reconciliation by improving emergency management supports,” he said.

Environment Minister George Heyman said the budget includes money to expand the River Forecast Centre and flood plain mapping program to provide communities with more timely and accurate weather information and to help identify areas where dikes and other protections should be strengthened or located.

“It’s not enough to react,” Heyman said. “We need to be able to predict. We need to be able to prepare and we need to be able to invest. The message is absolutely clear: we’re not waiting another decade or two to see the impacts of climate change.”

Slick said she spent two years working on recovery projects in the countries impacted by the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

“I’ve seen the ultimate devastation that can be caused when you have both an earthquake and tsunami,” she said.”I would say, just imagine if you could take your hand and wipe it across the community and everything’s gone.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2022.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press

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Impossible to link meteorological and climate events? bloomer

This article is part of the Rumor Detector section, click here for other articles.

The root of the problem

At first, it is natural that scientists traditionally hesitate to confuse meteorology and climatology: although they are related, they are Two distinct branches of science. The first refers to the study of atmospheric phenomena to predict the weather in a short time and in a particular place. The second relates to studying trends over a long period of time (at least 30 years). Climate scientists’ projections also cover large geographic areas, even the entire planet.

Thus what distinguishes weather from climate is the temporal scale (short term vs long term) and the spatial scale (limited areas on one hand, extending on the other).

In addition, scientists are not the only ones reluctant to make links between extreme weather events and climate change. Media too: There are rarely any reports linking these events to the main trend of global warming.

2017 study It concluded, for example, that less than 10% of articles in major US media go into this region regarding historical wildfires or floods, while 33% of articles link climate change to extreme heat waves, and 24% to droughts standard.

Attribution

However, if even 15 years ago it was impossible to attribute meteorological events to climate change, today it is less and less the case. A modern branch of climatology is devoted exclusively to this. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated climate models, climate scientists – like these from Refer the weather in the world – Calculate in a very short time The probability of an extreme weather event occurring without climate change.

More than 400 studies Attribution studies published to date have overwhelmingly concluded – about 70% – that weather-related disasters in the past decade have been more likely or more severe due to human-caused climate change. Many of the most devastating weather events in Canada since the early 2010s are listed among the links illustrated by this approach, which has also entitlement From eulogy In the last years. Attributing an extreme event to climate is now “routine” and constitutes a “reliable science”, Introductory judgment from the magazine temper nature in 2018.

European researchers For example concluded That the 2018 heatwaves — which, among other things, caused 74 deaths in Quebec — would have been nearly impossible without climate change. There was a wildfire in 2016 in Fort McMurray up to six times more due to climate change. It was the 2017 wildfire season in British Columbia two to four times more impressive.

This led to the issuance of experts from the World Meteorological Organization Recommendations To help scientists better explain the role of climate change in the recent weather event to the media. Instead of starting with the usual caveats […]talk of attribution of extreme conditions should begin with a reminder of how anthropogenic climate change affects the type of phenomenon involved,” they argue.

It’s hard to say if the whole thing really affected communication. study Published in 2020, which looked at how a small sample of one-fifth of California’s media attributed droughts in California to the climate, concluding that there was “interest” from its journalists, but it was hard to see a trend there.

This is because the science of attribution works in terms of probabilities – such an event is four or six times as likely due to warming. By comparison, the temptation for journalists and the public often remains to reduce the problem to a binary answer – the extreme event is caused solely by global warming, or not – as Explains Wolfgang BlauCo-founder of the new Reuters Institute Program for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford (Oxford Climate Press Network).

Image credits: Port Arthur, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey, August 2017 / SC National Guard / Wikipedia Commons