A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire in Mandeville Canyon, in Los Angeles. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The remaining of a destroyed house are seen in Port St Lucie, Florida, after a tornado hit the area and caused severe damage as Hurricane Milton swept through Florida on October 11, 2024. Nearly 2.5 million households and businesses were still without power, and some areas in the path cut through the Sunshine State by the monster storm from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean remained flooded. File. (For representational purpose only)
| Photo Credit: AFP

Human-driven warming of ocean temperatures increased the maximum wind speeds of every Atlantic hurricane in 2024, according to a new analysis released Wednesday (November 20, 2024), highlighting how climate change is amplifying the destructive power of storms.

The study, published by the research institute Climate Central, found that all eleven hurricanes in 2024 intensified by nine to 28 miles per hour (14-45 kph) during the record-breaking ocean warmth of the 2024 hurricane season.

“Emissions from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have influenced the temperatures of sea surfaces around the world,” author Daniel Gilford said in a call with reporters.

In the Gulf of Mexico, these emissions made sea surface temperatures around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4C) hotter than they would have been in a world without climate change.

This rise fuels stronger hurricanes.

The increased temperatures intensified storms like Debby and Oscar, which grew from tropical storms into full-fledged hurricanes.

Other hurricanes were pushed up a category on the Saffir-Simpson scale, including Milton and Beryl which escalated from Category 4 to Category 5 due to climate change, while Helene climbed from Category 3 to Category 4.

Each rise in category corresponds to a roughly fourfold increase in destructive potential.

Helene proved particularly devastating, claiming more than 200 lives, making it the second deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in over half a century, surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The new analytical approach allows researchers to hone in on a given storm’s track — showing for example that, at Hurricane Milton’s point of peak intensification before landfall, climate change made the warm sea surface temperatures 100 times more likely to occur than otherwise, and increased maximum wind speed by 24 mph.

Gilford and his colleagues also published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Environmental Research Climate examining hurricane intensities from 2019 to 2023. They found that 84 percent of hurricanes during that period were significantly strengthened by human-caused ocean warming.

While their two studies focused on the Atlantic Basin, the researchers said that their methods could be applied to tropical cyclones globally.

Climatologist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, who leads World Weather Attribution, praised the team’s methodology for advancing beyond previous research that primarily linked climate change to hurricane-related rainfall.

Otto warned that these climate supercharged storms are occurring with the world at just 1.3C (2.3F) above pre-industrial temperatures, and that the impacts are likely to worsen as temperatures rise beyond 1.5C (2.7F).

“The hurricane scale is capped at Category Five — but we might need to think about, should that continue to be the case just so that people are aware that something is going to hit them that is different from everything else they’ve experienced before,” she said.

Climate change is contributing to record numbers of people being uprooted from their homes globally, while worsening the often already “hellish” conditions of displacement, the United Nations (U.N.) said on Tuesday (November 12, 2024).

With international climate talks under way in Baku, the U.N. refugee agency highlighted how soaring global temperatures and extreme weather events are impacting displacement numbers and conditions, as it called for more and better investment in mitigating the risks.

In a fresh report, U.N.H.C.R pointed to how climate shocks in places like Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar were interacting with conflict to push those already in danger into even more dire situations.

“Across our warming world, drought, floods, life-threatening heat and other extreme weather events are creating emergencies with alarming frequency,” U.N.H.C.R chief Filippo Grandi said in the foreword to the report.

“People forced to flee their homes are on the front lines of this crisis,” he said, pointing out that 75 percent of displaced people live in countries with high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards.

“As the speed and scale of climate change increase, this figure will only continue to rise.”

A record 120 million people already live forcibly displaced by war, violence and persecution — most of them inside their own countries, U.N.H.C.R figures from June showed.

“Globally, the number of people that have been displaced by conflict has doubled over the last 10 years,” Andrew Harper, U.N.H.C.R’s special advisor on climate action, pointed out to AFP.

At the same time, U.N.H.C.R. pointed to recent data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre indicating that weather-related disasters have displaced some 220 million people inside their countries over the past decade alone — equivalent to approximately 60,000 displacements per day.

“We’re just seeing more and more and more people being displaced,” Mr. Harper said, lamenting a dire lack of the funds needed to support those who flee and the communities that host them.

“We are seeing across the board, a hellish situation become even tougher.”

Most refugee settlement areas, he pointed out, are found in lower-income countries, frequently “in the desert, in areas which are prone to flooding, in places without necessary infrastructure to deal with the increasing impacts of climate change”.

This is set to get worse. By 2040, the number of countries in the world facing extreme climate-related hazards is expected to rise from three to 65, UNHCR said, with the vast majority of them hosting displaced populations.

And by 2050, most refugee settlements and camps are projected to experience twice as many days of dangerous heat as they do today, the report cautioned.

That could not only be uncomfortable and a health hazard to the people living there, but could also lead to crop failures and livestock dying off, Mr. Harper warned.

“We’re seeing increasing loss of arable land in places exposed to climate extremes, like Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Afghanistan, but at the same time we’ve got the massive increase in populations,” he said.

UNHCR is urging decision-makers gathered for the COP29 in Baku to ensure that far more of international climate financing reaches refugees and host communities most in need.

Currently, UNHCR pointed out, extremely fragile states receive only around $2 per person in annual adaptation funding, compared to $161 per person in non-fragile states.

Without more investment in building climate resilience and adaptation in such communities, more displacement towards countries less impacted by climate change will be inevitable, Mr. Harper said.

“If we don’t invest in peace, if we don’t invest in climate adaptation in these areas, then people will move,” he said.

“It’s illogical to expect them to do anything different.”

File picture of a volunteer pouring water to cool a man off during a hot day in Karachi, Pakistan. 2024 will be first year over 1.5 degree Celsius hotter than pre-industrial period
| Photo Credit: AP

This year is “virtually certain” to eclipse 2023 as the world’s warmest since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday (November 7, 2024). The data was released ahead of next week’s U.N. COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will try to agree a huge increase in funding to tackle climate change. Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has dampened expectations for the talks.

C3S said that from January to October, the average global temperature had been so high that 2024 was sure to be the world’s hottest year — unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged to near-zero.

“The fundamental, underpinning cause of this year’s record is climate change,” C3S Director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.

“The climate is warming, generally. It’s warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken,” he said.

The scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet is more than 1.5C hotter than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.

ALSO READ: Zeroing in on methane diplomacy, at COP29 

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are the main cause of global warming.

Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at public research university ETH Zurich, said she was not surprised by the milestone, and urged governments at COP29 to agree stronger action to wean their economies off CO2-emitting fossil fuels.

“The limits that were set in the Paris agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,” Ms. Seneviratne said.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming surpassing 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), to avoid its worst consequences.

The world has not breached that target – which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades – but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris goal around 2030.

“It’s basically around the corner now,” Mr. Buontempo said.

Every fraction of temperature increase fuels extreme weather. In October, catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record wildfires tore through Peru, and flooding in Bangladesh destroyed more than 1 million tons of rice, sending food prices skyrocketing. In the U.S., Hurricane Milton was also worsened by human-caused climate change.

C3S’ records go back to 1940, which are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.

As greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new high in 2023, the earth will continue to warm for many years to come, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is increasing more quickly than at any other point in human history, increasing by almost 10% in just 20 years.

According to WMO’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, large vegetation fire CO2 emissions and a possible reduction in carbon absorption by forests combined with stubbornly high fossil fuel CO2 emissions from human and industrial activities to drive the increase.

Echoing the UN chief’s longstanding appeals, WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett told journalists that carbon dioxide (CO2) – one of the three main greenhouse gases, along with methane and nitrous oxide – is now accumulating in the atmosphere “faster than at any time experienced during human existence”. Because of the extremely long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, “we are committed to rising temperatures for many, many years to come,” she added.

WMO’s 2024 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin offers a stark, scientific reminder that rising CO2 levels need to be slowed. In 2004, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 377.1 parts per million (ppm), while in 2023, this reached 420 ppm, according to WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Network.

“This is an increase of 42.9 parts per million, or 11.4 per cent in just 20 years,” Ms Barrett explained.

“These are more than statistics,” the WMO deputy chief insisted. “Every part per million matters, every fraction of a degree of temperature increase matters; it matters in terms of the speed of glacier and ice retreat, the acceleration of sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification. It matters in terms of the number of people who will be exposed to extreme heat every year, the extinction of species, the impact on our ecosystems and economies.”

Paris:

Deforestation continued last year at a rate far beyond pledges to end the practice by 2030, according to a major study published Tuesday.

Forests nearly the size of Ireland were lost in 2023, according to two dozen research organisations, NGOs and advocacy groups, with 6.37 million hectares (15.7 million acres) of trees felled and burned.

This “significantly exceeded” levels that would have kept the world on track to eliminate deforestation by the end of the decade, a commitment made in 2021 by more than 140 leaders.

Forests are home to 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial plant and animal species and crucial for regulating water cycles and sequestering CO2, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

“Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a biodiversity and land use consultant at Climate Focus and lead author of the “Forest Declaration Assessment” report.

“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates.”

In 2023, 3.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest — particularly carbon rich and ecologically biodiverse environments — disappeared, a figure that should have fallen significantly to meet the 2030 objective.

Soya and nickel

In high-risk regions, researchers pointed to backsliding in Bolivia and in Indonesia.~CHECK~

The report said there was an “alarming rise” in deforestation in Bolivia, which jumped 351 percent between 2015 and 2023.

The “trend shows no sign of abating”, it added, with forests largely cleared for agriculture, notably for soya but also beef and sugar.

In Indonesia, deforestation slumped between 2020-2022 but started rising sharply last year.

Ironically, that is partly down to demand for materials often seen as eco-friendly, such as viscose for clothing, and a surge in nickel mining for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies.

There was better news from Brazil.

While it remains the country with the highest deforestation rates in the world, it has made key progress.

The situation has significantly improved in the Amazon, which has benefited from protective measures put in place by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

However, in the Cerrado, a key tropical savannah below the Amazon, deforestation has increased.

Degraded forests

The report also highlights the role of logging, road building and fires in forest degradation, when land is damaged but not razed entirely.

In 2022, the last year data was available, a forest area twice the size of Germany was degraded.

Erin Matson, senior consultant at Climate Focus, and co-author of the report, said “strong policies and strong enforcement” were needed.

“To meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims,” she said.

The report comes in the wake of the European Commission’s proposal last week to postpone by a year (to the end of 2025) the entry into force of its anti-deforestation law, despite protests from NGOs.

“We have to fundamentally rethink our relationship with consumption and our models of production to shift away from a reliance on over exploiting natural resources,” said Matson.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Perth, Australia:

In June 2024, 13 young people in Hawaii took on their state government in court and won the right to have greater input in climate policy.

They sued the state for infringing on their right to “a clean and healthful environment”, as promised under the State constitution.

In victory, the young people forced a number of concessions including a pledge to pursue net zero by 2040 and over USD 40 million investment in electric vehicles over the next six years.

Young people are turning to activism as a way to process the emotional weight of a world in crisis.

From Greta Thunberg to Australia’s Anjali Sharma, there are plenty of people in Gen Z who are taking action on climate.

Despite the United Nations also adding the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 2022 which further opens the possibility to take governments to the courts, it’s not easy.

Gen Z is growing up in an era where the impacts of climate change are both immediate and undeniable and it’s leaving them feeling powerless.

Generation Z – those born between 1995 and 2010 – make up 30 per cent of the global population. In Australia’s latest census, Gen Z accounted for 18.2 per cent (or 4.6 million) of the country’s 25 million population.

Unlike previous generations, who had time to gradually adjust to the realities of environmental transformations, Generation Z is acutely aware of the ecological crises unfolding around them, leading to a deep sense of environmental anxiety.

Distress and fear

As a result, many digitally connected, globally aware Gen Zers experience intense climate anxiety, characterised by chronic fear, distress and deep concern for the planet’s future.

A survey of Australian Gen Z university students was conducted between September 2021 and April 2022 with 446 participants which revealed that climate change is their top environmental concern.

They often feel let down by older generations, governments and institutions, whose actions seem inadequate in the face of the growing evidence about the environmental threats the world and Australia in particular face.

More than 80 per cent of the young people participating in the survey expressed significant worry and many experienced severe climate anxiety.

This anxiety manifests in various forms, including eco-anxiety, solastalgia (distress triggered by environmental changes) and climate grief, reflecting the complex emotional landscape of a generation coming of age amid a global environmental emergency.

The situation Gen Z faces and their future prospects are further exacerbated by the complexity of other developments resulting in what is known as a polycrisis, a “great disagreement, confusion, or suffering that is caused by many different problems happening at the same time so that they together have a very big effect.”

Existential threat

Eco-anxiety, a chronic fear of an environmental catastrophe, arises from the perception that climate change poses an existential threat.

For many in Gen Z, the overwhelming nature of this threat leads to persistent worry and stress. This is also fuelled by the sense of urgency and responsibility they think they have to comply with.

Gen Z is witnessing their local natural environments and the broader global ecosystem undergo rapid, often destructive and irreversible changes, including biodiversity loss, species extinction and the degradation of ecosystems.

Many experience profound grief which is tied not just to physical harm, but also to the loss of hope for a stable and prosperous future.

With 96 per cent of Australian Gen Zs believing that climate change is human-made, young people are experiencing heightened levels of stress, anxiety and depression as they grapple with the realities of a warming planet.

For some members of Gen Z, the constant stream of climate-related news, coupled with personal experiences of climate-related calamities, such as wildfires, floods, droughts or cyclones, leads to a form of trauma that can have long-lasting effects on mental health.

A generational crisis

For Gen Z, climate change anxiety is not just about fear of environmental destruction; it is also about grappling with a crisis of identity and purpose.

As they come of age in a world that seems increasingly unstable and unpredictable, many young people are questioning what kind of future they can expect to have, and whether it is even ethical to plan for the future in traditional ways, such as pursuing professional careers, starting families or buying homes, when the planet is in such peril.

This crisis of identity is further complicated by the pressure to act. Many young people feel a deep sense of responsibility to address climate change, but this can also ignite feelings of guilt and shame when they perceive their actions as insufficient.

The weight of this responsibility can be overwhelming, leading to burnout and a sense of futility.

The role of activism

In response to these challenges, some members of Gen Z are channelling their anxiety into activism.

Climate activism is seen as a way to regain a sense of control and agency in the face of overwhelming challenges.

This activism takes many forms, from participating in global climate strikes to advocating for sustainable policies at the local level. However, activism is not a panacea for climate anxiety.

This is seen from the answers of 65 per cent of Australia’s university Gen Z who do not engage in traditional climate activism, but instead are using technology and social media to voice their concerns.

While it can provide a sense of purpose and community, activism can also be exhausting. The constant need to fight for change, coupled with the slow pace of progress, can lead to burnout and exacerbate mental health issues.

Additionally, the pressure to always be “on” and engaged in activism can be mentally and emotionally draining, leading to further feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Mental health support

Given the significant mental health challenges posed by climate change anxiety, there is a growing recognition of the need for robust mental health support for Gen Z.

This support must be tailored to address the unique challenges of climate anxiety, experiencing unprecedented levels of fear and despair, and feelings of hopelessness that are so prevalent among young people.

There is a need for more mental health professionals trained to understand and address eco-anxiety and related issues. Therapeutic interventions that focus on building resilience, fostering a sense of agency and helping young people navigate their complex emotions are crucial.

Building supportive communities where young people can share their experiences, particularly positive outcomes, and feelings about climate change is also important.

These communities can provide a sense of solidarity and help combat the isolation that often accompanies climate anxiety. Schools and educational institutions can play a key role in addressing climate anxiety by incorporating discussions about mental health and climate change into their curricula.

By providing young people with the tools to understand and cope with their emotions, educational initiatives can help mitigate the psychological impacts of climate anxiety.

The way forward

The challenges posed by climate change anxiety for Gen Z are indeed profound and multifaceted.

However, the importance and urgency of their role cannot be overstated. With the climate crisis in a time of polycrisis worsening, Gen Z’s involvement in shaping a resilient and sustainable future is critical.

Their unique perspective and relentless drive for change position them as key players in responding to global warming as well as in bridging generational divides, fostering global cooperation and ensuring that climate action is grounded in science and equity.

(Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Since April, the world has seen record high ocean temperatures and that’s bad news for the plants and animals that call the ocean home.

Longer and more frequent bouts of extreme temperatures can cause the exodus of some species and the invasion of others, with potentially devastating impacts on the resident ecosystem.

Global warming manifests as a gradual increase in temperatures over time around the world, caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions.

However, scientists are finding that the most important impacts come from short-term spikes in temperature.

In the ocean, these discrete periods of extreme temperatures, lasting weeks to months, are called marine heatwaves.

Marine heatwaves can be generated by either the atmosphere or by ocean processes.

For example, weather systems like high pressure systems can lead to low cloud and greater solar heating while ocean changes can be driven by strengthened poleward currents that move heat from high to low latitudes.

The likelihood and intensity of these atmospheric and oceanic drivers of marine heatwaves can also be affected by large-scale phenomena like El Nino or La Nina.

Larger portions of the oceans are likely to experience marine heatwaves during El Nino events.

Marine heatwaves can have dramatic impacts on marine organisms and ecosystems that may extend for long periods after temperatures have returned to normal.

Impacts range from the suppressed growth of microscopic marine plants to mass deaths in fish and marine mammals, encroachment of invasive species and toxic algal outbreaks.

Importantly, marine heatwaves have been associated with extensive dieback of species like coral reefs, kelp forests and seagrass beds that form the homes and breeding grounds for a large amount of the ocean’s biodiversity.

These impacts can have devastating knock-on effects for fisheries, aquaculture and tourism industries, with individual events linked to direct losses of up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Ningaloo Nino that formed early in 2011 was an iconic extreme event.

Intensified winds along the Pacific equator – associated with an extreme La Niña – forced warm water westwards and through the Indonesian Archipelago, into the Indian Ocean and poleward along the coast of Western Australia.

This flood of warm water caused a record-breaking marine heatwave that wiped out the endemic kelp forest for over 100 km along the Australian coast along with one-third (1,300 square kilometres) of the Shark Bay seagrass meadow, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The Ningaloo Nino caused deaths and reduced reproduction in abalone, scallops and crabs that led to the closure of associated fisheries for several years.

The Tasman Sea is another hotspot for ocean warming and marine heatwaves.

Two consecutive extreme events occurred the summer of 2015/16 and 2017/18. Their causes were very different.

The first was primarily caused by an intensification of the warm East Australian Current while the second was caused by a long-lasting high pressure system over the ocean.

These and previous events brought an invasion of sea urchins from mainland waters that led to the decimation of kelp forests off eastern Tasmania.

The 2015/16 event alone led to new diseases in cultured oysters, poor salmon performance and high mortalities of abalone. Together this led to economic losses of more than half a billion dollars.

As marine heatwaves exist on the backdrop of long-term global ocean warming, these extreme events are becoming more intense and more frequent.

Over the past century the number of days each year experiencing marine heatwave conditions has increased by more than 50 percent.

The shorter time between marine heatwaves means that many populations no longer have the time to recover between events, which can lead to species moving their range or being wiped out.

And this will only worsen in the future.

Many studies show that some coral reefs are losing their hard corals.

And with increased future warming the very existence of tropical coral reefs are in doubt.

Since April, the oceans have been warmer than at any time during the instrumental record.

It’s probably at least 100,000 years – before the last ice age – since temperatures could have been this warm.

As a consequence, scientists are seeing more of the ocean experiencing marine heatwave conditions than ever. And that’s before the added push from the developing El Nino.

Over the past few weeks alone, there have been extreme marine heatwaves in all of the ocean basins, including around the UK and Japan, off Peru and in waters extending off of the Californian, Florida and east and west Canadian coasts.

As the Northern Hemisphere enters its warmest season, marine heatwaves are at their most dangerous, pushing marine organisms above their thermal limits.

Over the next few months, expect reports of significant ecosystem harm to start to emerge.

An understanding of the physical drivers of these events and their biological impacts provides scientists with some ability to forecast their likelihood in the future.

This can help marine resource managers make decisions, like moving aquaculture stocks, reducing fishing quotas or taking direct action to suppress warming (like shading of aquaculture cultivation areas, or moving aquaculture pens out of harm’s way) in small, high-value regions.

But ultimately, to avoid escalating impacts the only solution is to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

Associate Professor Alex Sen Gupta is a research scientist and lecturer at the Climate Change Research Centre and the Centre For Marine Science and Innovation at UNSW. His work revolves around the role of the ocean in the climate system, how the ocean influences regional climate and what global climate models tell us about the future of the ocean, with a recent focus on marine heatwaves.

Associate Professor Sen Gupta’s research has been funded by the Australian Research Council.

Dr Katie Smith is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Marine Biological Association in the UK. Her research interests include understanding the impacts of climate change on marine species, throughout their life history and from individual to whole-ecosystem level.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info.

Beijing, China:

Seven people died and three were missing after heavy rain and flooding hit central China’s Hunan province, state media reported Tuesday.

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with heavy rains battering swathes of the country and many regions enduring sweltering heat waves.

The country is by far the world’s largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say drive climate change and make extreme weather more frequent and intense.

In Hunan’s Yongxing county, three people missing since last Wednesday were confirmed dead after a landslide.

Four more were killed and three remain missing in Zixing, where more than 11,000 people were evacuated after the city experienced record rainfall — some areas receiving 645 millimetres (25 inches) in just 24 hours — state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

The rains damaged nearly 900 homes and caused 1,345 road collapses, Xinhua added. Around 5,400 rescuers have been dispatched to help those affected.

The downpours have been caused by the remnants of Typhoon Gaemi, which made landfall in eastern China on Thursday, with Hunan particularly hard hit.

On Sunday, a landslide destroyed a guesthouse and killed 15 people, while elsewhere in the province nearly 4,000 residents were evacuated after a dam breach.

On Monday, China’s National Meteorological Centre issued an orange alert, the second highest level, for rainstorms across much of the south, southwest, and centre of the country, as well as the capital Beijing, Hebei province, and Tianjin in the north.

In northeastern Liaoning province, more than 10,000 people were evacuated from areas near the Yalu River, on the border with North Korea, as waters rose.

Disaster agencies in the country have allocated 110,000 items of relief supplies to support emergency relocation of those affected and provide basic supplies in Liaoning, Jilin, Hunan, and Shaanxi provinces, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Singapore:

Climate change is driving changes in rainfall patterns across the world, scientists said in a paper published on Friday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.

Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were lashed by the year’s most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shut as wind speeds surged up to 227 kph (141 mph). On China’s eastern coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.

Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.

Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia at the China Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found about 75% of the world’s land area had seen a rise in “precipitation variability” or wider swings between wet and dry weather.

Warming temperatures have enhanced the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, the researchers said in a paper published by the Science journal.

“(Variability) has increased in most places, including Australia, which means rainier rain periods and drier dry periods,” said Steven Sherwood, a scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study.

“This is going to increase as global warming continues, enhancing the chances of droughts and/or floods.”

FEWER, BUT MORE INTENSE, STORMS

Scientists believe that climate change is also reshaping the behaviour of tropical storms, including typhoons, making them less frequent but more powerful.

“I believe higher water vapour in the atmosphere is the ultimate cause of all of these tendencies toward more extreme hydrologic phenomena,” Sherwood told Reuters.

Typhoon Gaemi, which first made landfall in Taiwan on Wednesday, was the strongest to hit the island in eight years.

While it is difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, models predict that global warming makes typhoons stronger, said Sachie Kanada, a researcher at Japan’s Nagoya University.

“In general, warmer sea surface temperature is a favourable condition for tropical cyclone development,” she said.

In its “blue paper” on climate change published this month, China said the number of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea had declined significantly since the 1990s, but they were getting stronger.

Taiwan also said in its climate change report published in May that climate change was likely to reduce the overall number of typhoons in the region while making each one more intense.

The decrease in the number of typhoons is due to the uneven pattern of ocean warming, with temperatures rising faster in the western Pacific than the east, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical cyclone research scientist at the University of Reading.

Water vapour capacity in the lower atmosphere is expected to rise by 7% for each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperatures, with tropical cyclone rainfall in the United States surging by as much as 40% for each single degree rise, he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)