Human induced climate change behind flooding disasters in Nepal

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World Weather Attribution, an international collaboration, has underscored the urgent need for Nepal to limit development in low-lying, riverside areas of the cities and scale up early warning and prompt action to avoid repeat of flooding disasters.

'Climate change was responsible for the extreme three day downpours in Nepal about 10 percent more intense,' concluded the organization in its recently published report. The flood and landslide triggered by heavy rain in Nepal in late September caused heavy loss to the country as it claimed at least 244 lives. 'The rainfall became 10 percent more intense by human-induced climate change,' pointed out the report.

'Bursts of rainfall will become even more heavier, risking more destructive floods until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy,' warned the organization. 'Reducing development in flood-prone areas of cities will help protect people in Nepal from future floods,' according to the report. 'The explosive monsoon rainfall that hit Nepal was increased by climate change,' concludes the report.

The flooding witnessed by Kathmandu valley had never occurred before in the past, according to eye-witnesses. More than 50 people were killed and property worth billions of rupees were damaged due to the heavy rainfall that hit Kathmandu recently. 'If the atmosphere wasn't overloaded with fossil fuel emissions, these floods would have been less intense, less destructive and less deadly,' remarked . Mariam Zachariah, Researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, London.

'This study highlights how vulnerable Asia is to increasing downpours ' in 2024 alone, our studies have uncovered the fingerprint of climate change on deadly floods in India, China, Taiwan, the UAE, Oman, and now Nepal,' she pointed out. The floods in Nepal followed three days of extreme rainfall starting September 26. 'Records were broken across central and eastern Nepal, with some weather stations recording more than 320mm on September 28 ' equivalent to about half of London's total annual rainfall,' points out the report.

Limiting development in flood-prone urban areas will save lives when floods occur in the future, the researchers pointed out. The study was conducted by 20 researchers as part of the World Weather Attribution group, including scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in Nepal, India, Sweden, the United States and the United Kingdom.

'These floods turned the streets of Kathmandu into raging rivers. 'Clearly, climate change is no longer a distant threat in Asia,' remarked Roshan Jha, Researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. 'With every fraction of a degree of warming, the atmosphere can potentially hold more moisture, leading to much heavier downpours, and catastrophic floods like these.'

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