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bay of bengal
'Very, Very Scary': Intensifying Cyclone Mocha Takes Aim at World's Largest Refugee Camp
"This is a near worst-case scenario for one of the most storm surge flood vulnerable regions in the world," one scientist warned. "I hate to say it but we're looking at a potential mass casualty event."
May 12, 2023
Officials in Bangladesh and Myanmar are preparing Friday to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people as a tropical storm turbocharged by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis strengthens in the Bay of Bengal.
Cyclone Mocha is forecast to intensify further before making landfall on Sunday between western Myanmar and the Bangladeshi city of Cox's Bazar, home to the world's largest refugee camp. Roughly 1 million Rohingya people forced to flee Myanmar amid the country's ongoing genocide against them live in the highly exposed district.
"This is a very, very scary storm," tweeted environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, pointing to its severity and current path.
"The government of Bangladesh needs to develop an inclusive evacuation plan."
The evacuation of more than 500,000 people from the Bangladeshi coast "is expected to start Saturday with 576 cyclone shelters ready to provide refuge to those who are moved from their homes," The Associated Pressreported, citing government administrator Muhammad Shaheen Imran.
Bangladesh, a delta nation with more than 160 million residents, is already prone to extreme weather disasters, and that's increasingly the case as the warming Indian Ocean generates more intense and longer-lasting cyclones as well as heavier rainfall.
The impoverished Rohingya refugees living in Cox's Bazar are especially vulnerable to the incoming storm, and it's unclear how many, if any, of them are included in the Bangladeshi government's evacuation plans.
United Nations Refugee Agency spokesperson Olga Sarrado toldReuters that preparations are underway for a partial evacuation of the camp, if necessary. The World Health Organization is also setting up nearly three dozen mobile medical teams and 40 ambulances, along with emergency surgery and cholera kits for the camp.
\u201cCyclone Mocha has me very concerned. Everyone along the Bangladesh-Myanmar coast needs to be on alert. This is a near-worst case scenario for one of the most storm-surge flood vulnerable region in the world. I hate to say it but we\u2019re looking at a potential mass casualty event.\u201d— Nahel Belgherze (@Nahel Belgherze) 1683834677
"Still reeling from a devastating fire in March that destroyed more than 2,600 shelters and critical infrastructure, over 850,000 refugees risk losing their homes and livelihoods," the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warned in a statement. "Strong wind, heavy rains, and subsequent flash floods and mudslides could destroy shelters, community centers, and health clinics, depriving thousands of essential services and humanitarian aid."
"In preparation, more than 3,000 Rohingya refugees have been trained to respond to flooding and mudslides," said the IRC, which is "scaling up its emergency response in Cox's Bazar." According to the organization: "Three mobile medical teams will be deployed to remote areas in the camps and communities to provide emergency medical treatment. Additionally, a mobile protection unit designed for emergency settings will offer protection services to vulnerable groups such as women, girls, the elderly, and those with disabilities."
IRC Bangladesh director Hasina Rahman lamented how "time and again, we have seen the devastating impact of extreme weather events in Cox’s Bazar. Since 2017, countless shelters, schools, health clinics, and safe spaces for survivors of gender-based violence have been decimated as a result of floods and mudslides, as well as preventable tragedies such as the fire in March this year."
"As a low-lying country with major cities in coastal areas, Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change, which makes annual weather events—such as cyclones—more intense and frequent," said Rahman. "The impacts—loss of life, destroyed crops, challenges to livelihoods, damage to homes and infrastructure—are often borne by the people and communities who have contributed least to the climate crisis: Bangladesh, for example, emits less than 1% of global CO2 emissions."
While a rapid and just clean energy transition and other far-reaching transformations are needed to mitigate the causes of global warming, developing nations like Bangladesh cannot "cope with continued weather shocks without support that addresses the effects of climate change, such as early warning systems, anticipatory action, improving infrastructure to protect against flooding, and investment into climate adaptation," Rahman noted.
"It is crucial to fortify shelters and critical infrastructure," Rahman continued. "This involves using durable construction materials to strengthen community facilities like child-friendly spaces, learning facilities, and mosques, which serve as safe points during emergencies."
"Additionally, the government of Bangladesh needs to develop an inclusive evacuation plan in collaboration with U.N. agencies, humanitarian organizations, and the refugee and host communities," she stressed. "The plan should prioritize access to emergency shelters, ensuring family unity, and the protection of vulnerable groups, including women, children, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities."
The U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM) observed that "last year, the camps escaped devastation from the Bay of Bengal cyclone Sitrang, which killed 35 people, displaced over 20,000, and caused over $35 million in damages in other parts of the country."
Cyclone Mocha, the first to form in the bay this year, "strengthened Friday into the equivalent of a category 1 Atlantic hurricane and is moving north at 11 kilometers per hour (7 miles per hour)," CNNreported, citing the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. "The storm's winds could peak at 220 kph (137 mph)—equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane—just before making landfall on Sunday morning."
India's Meteorological Department on Friday projected that "a storm surge of up to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) was likely to inundate low-lying coastal areas in the path of the cyclone at the time of landfall," including Cox's Bazar, the outlet noted.
To assist refugees and local host communities as they brace for Cyclone Mocha, IOM said that it "is strengthening camp infrastructure, preparing for medical emergencies, and supporting volunteers in cyclone preparedness."
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also expressed "grave concerns" about the storm's potential impacts on "already vulnerable and displaced communities" in neighboring Myanmar, where a military junta rules.
"Of particular worry is the situation facing 232,100 people who are displaced across Rakhine. Many of the [internally displaced person] camps and sites in Rakhine are located in low-lying coastal areas susceptible to storm surge," said OCHA. "The suffering of more than a million displaced people and other communities in the northwest is also expected to worsen over the coming days as the ex-cyclone moves inland bringing heavy rain. Displaced people in the northwest are already living in precarious conditions in camps, displacement sites, or in forests often without proper shelter."
In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis inundated Myanmar, killing more than 138,000 people, uprooting 800,000, and affecting 2.4 million.
"Extreme weather hazards will occur more frequently due to climate change in the years ahead. The linkages between climate change, migration, and displacement are increasingly pressing worldwide," IOM pointed out. "To avert, mitigate, and address displacement linked to climate disasters and strengthen people's resilience," the U.N. agency urged policymakers around the world "to implement sustainable climate adaptation, preparedness, and disaster risk reduction measures."
Despite knowing that extracting and burning more coal, oil, and gas will exacerbate the deadly effects of the climate emergency, profit-hungry fossil fuel executives are still planning to expand drilling with the continued support of many governments.
While COP27 delegates agreed to establish a loss and damage fund—after failing to commit to phasing out the fossil fuels that are causing so much harm—previous efforts to ramp up climate aid from the Global North to the Global South have fallen far short of what's needed due to the stinginess of wealthy countries, especially the United States.
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CO2 Levels Are the Highest in a Million Years as Extreme Weather and Flooding Rage Across the Globe
We can change all this, but we have to hurry to shut down CO2 emissions quickly.
Sep 01, 2022
CNN reports that satellite photos show that the overflowing Indus has created a new body of water in southern Pakistan some 62 miles (100km) wide. It will take days or weeks for the water to recede, and in the meantime millions are left homeless and over all, 33 million people have been affected by the worst monsoon floods in recorded history. CNN quotes Pakistan's Climate Minister Sherry Rahman as saying "That parts of the country 'resemble a small ocean,' and that 'by the time this is over, we could well have one-quarter or one-third of Pakistan under water.'"
Because of our burning of fossil fuels to drive cars and heat and cool buildings, the world is heating up. But the Indian Ocean is heating up a third faster than the rest of the world. Very warm waters in the Bay of Bengal are helping create more destructive cyclones and flooding. The air over warming waters contains more moisture than the 20th century average. Warming waters also make the winds that blow over them more erratic, and wayward winds from the Arabian Sea helped push the heavy monsoon rains farther north than they usually extend.
We don't have to look far for the culprits. J. Blunden, and T. Boyer, Eds., 2022: "State of the Climate in 2021" Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 103 (8), Si-S465, https://doi.org/10.1175/2022BAMSStateoftheClimate provides a state of the climate report for 2021.
It isn't good news. The concentration in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide increased another 2.6 parts per million, to a year-long average of 414.7 parts per million of CO2. We should be trying to get to zero increases of carbon dioxide, not increasing it. Arctic snow cores show that there hasn't been that must CO2 in the atmosphere for at least 800,000 years, i.e. nearly a million years. It turns out that if you go back to "1 million Years B.C." you don't find Raquel Welch, you find a steaming tropics of a world. The growth rate for methane was the highest on record. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas, and CO2 isn't any slouch itself. Methane, though, dissipates quickly if you don't keep adding to it in the stratosphere, in as little as nine years. If you put carbon dioxide up there, though, it can last thousands and thousands of years. It is gradually absorbed by the oceans or igneous rocks, but he ocean may reach its capacity for absorption of CO2 in only 15 years, after which the stuff will just stay up there, making earth hot.
The report says that Death Valley, California, reached 54.4degC (130.46 F.) for the second time since records have been kept. Across the global ice concentrations or "cryosphere," glaciers lost ice mass for the 34th consecutive year. Now the BBC is predicting that in the near future the glacier ice lost will become so great that it will threaten the water supplies of Switzerland and other European countries.
And in horrific news for Bangladesh and Egypt, the report says, "Across the world's oceans, global mean sea level was record high for the 10th consecutive year, reaching 97.0 mm above the 1993 average when satellite measurements began, an increase of 4.9 mm over 2020."
Seas rising, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere rising to best a million-year-old-record, super-monsoons. We can change all this, but we have to hurry to shut down CO2 emissions quickly.
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Is 2020's Record-Breaking Hurricane Season What the Future Holds?
"Globally, tropical cyclones are about 25 percent more likely to be at major-hurricane intensity now than four decades ago. The chances of rapid intensification in the 1980s was about one in 100 in the Atlantic. Nowadays, the chances are 1 in 20."
Dec 09, 2020
The most active Atlantic hurricane season on record began two weeks ahead of schedule and ended on November 30, 2020. Overall, this season was one for the record books. There were 30 named storms (meaning storms where top winds were 39 miles per hour or greater instead of the average 12). Of those storms, 13 were hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or greater) and six were major hurricanes (top winds of 111 mph or greater). This season surpasses the previous record holder, 2005, which witnessed 28 storms and 15 named hurricanes, and marks only the second time in recorded history when meteorologists ran out of names before the season was over and had to resort to the Greek alphabet.
The 2020 season also forms part of a pattern that calls into question what even constitutes an "average" season. It is the fifth consecutive year with an above average hurricane season. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this year's record-breaking season was enhanced by La Nina, a global weather pattern that causes heavier storms in some areas and droughts in others. Research by climate scientists predicts that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the number of extreme weather events charged by La Nina and El Nino will likely rise as well.
Stronger hurricanes are also fueled by warmer air temperatures, which means the atmosphere can hold more rain, and by warmer ocean sea surface temperatures, which create the perfect conditions for hurricanes to grow stronger. While ocean winds often have something called vertical wind shear, which can essentially cut down a developing hurricane into smaller pieces before it can build into something dangerous, NOAA data shows that since the 1980s, vertical wind shear has become increasingly weaker in areas that are farther away from the equator, setting them up for stronger hurricanes.
Still, says Gabriel Vecchi, professor in High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, the most remarkable part of 2020 is how rapidly storms have progressed from mild to dangerous. "Over the past few decades, since the 1980s, in the Atlantic and around the globe, the percentage of rapid intensifications has increased," Vecchi said.
Storms were able to become dangerous so quickly this year because of how warm the ocean was in many regions of the Atlantic and Caribbean. "The impact of long-term ocean warming on rapid intensification is a major reason for long-term increases in the fraction of hurricanes reaching the highest intensity levels," said Timothy M. Hall, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
A study led by James Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist at NOAA, and published in June 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found a significant increase of roughly 32 to 39 percent between 1979 and 2017 of hurricane intensities measured at Category 3 and higher compared with measurements at any intensity. Put differently, they found a 6 percent increase per decade of a hurricane reaching "major hurricane" status, that is, Category 3 or higher.
In the United States, Louisiana in particular bore the brunt of this year of storms. Five storms made landfall in the state--a new record. Hurricane Laura, which made landfall on August 26, was a Category 4. It struck Cameron (located between Houston and New Orleans on the coast) with 156 mph winds, destroying buildings and power infrastructure and inundating the region with a nine-to-12-foot storm surge. Six weeks later, on October 9, Category 2 Hurricane Delta hit just 20 miles east of where Laura had struck. Thousands of people were still living in shelters because their homes had been destroyed when Delta brought over-100-mph winds and over seven feet of storm surge.
Laura and Delta would have been much weaker if they had passed over a colder ocean on their way to Louisiana. "Both intensified rapidly over warm Gulf waters before Louisiana landfalls," Hall said. "Laura's intensification was especially rapid, and it occurred just prior to landfall." Hurricane Eta, which devastated parts of Nicaragua and Honduras, doubled in the 24 hours before it reached the coast.
The warmer air both hurricanes met on their journey to landfall also meant they caused more flooding. Hall said, "Hurricane winds blow over warm sea surface, causing evaporation of the seawater. The water vapor gets sucked high up in the storm, where it condenses and falls as rain." On average, says Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric sciences at Pennsylvania State University, atmospheric scientists expect to see a roughly 7 percent increase in moisture content for every 1 degree (Celsius) that air temperatures increase.
That extra rain causes problems even after the hurricane has left. Central America is still experiencing landslides due to the amount of rain following Category 5 Hurricane Iota, which dropped over 24 inches of rain on some regions of Nicaragua and Honduras when it arrived in mid-November. The earth was already saturated as a result of Category 4 Hurricane Eta, which hit the region earlier that month.
Eta and Iota also displayed another trend that climate change appears to be making worse--stalling. Like a party crasher who refused to leave, Eta stalled just off the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras, without moving on or dissipating. A study Hall and Timothy K. Kossin (NOAA) published in Nature in June 2019 found that the average forward speed of hurricanes in the North Atlantic had decreased by 17 percent between 1944 and 2017. This shift led Dorian to devastate the Bahamas in 2019, Florence to douse the Carolinas in 2018, and Harvey to inundate Houston in 2017.
"Hurricanes are 'steered' by large atmospheric wind patterns, something like a cork in a stream," said Hall. "There's good reason to think that the guiding wind patterns are becoming weaker and more prone to stagnating in a warming climate. . . . In fact, we do see an increasing percentage of hurricanes stalling in recent decades."
Signs of stalling are visible not only in hurricanes in the Atlantic but also in tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean, where the season began with Category 5 Cyclone Amphan, the strongest storm in the Bay of Bengal since 1999.
In late November, Cyclone Gati, a Category 2 storm, made landfall in Somalia--the first time a hurricane-strength storm made landfall in the country's history. In two days, Gati dropped the amount of rain that Somalia typically received in two years.
In the last days of November, Category 1 Cyclone Nivar formed in the Bay of Bengal and then struck Tamil Nadu and Chennai. It was the fourth storm in the region this year. The rains it brought, according to the Weather Channel India, were 188 percent above average between November 23 and 26. In November and December, this region was flooded by more rainfall than it usually receives in the monsoon season.
In the Pacific, the season was less active than the 2020 Atlantic season. (Typically, one region or the other is more intense.) Nonetheless, the Pacific experienced some intense storms marked by a similar pattern of rapid intensification. Vongfong (named Ambo in the Philippines) formed on May 10 and rapidly intensified into a Category 3 storm, hitting Samar Island, the third-largest island in the Philippines, on May 14, causing widespread flooding, washing out roads, and destroying crops.
In late October, Typhoon Goni (Rolly in the Philippines) rapidly intensified as a Category 5 storm struck Catanduanes Island in the Philippines, flooding buildings, bridges, and roads and destroying crops. Goni continued on, as a tropical depression, to Vietnam, where it also caused widespread flooding and landslides.
The rapid intensification of storms has made predicting disasters much harder, said Mann. "The hurricane forecasting models don't appear to capture rapid intensification episodes every well. It might be because of climate-change-related factors not in the models yet (for example, the penetration of heat further below the surface, which limits the churning up of cold waters that would otherwise slow or dampen development)."
"The net effect of this," said Mann, "is that it's hard to know days in advance just how much a hurricane will intensify before making landfall." Adds Vecchi, "It is a harder world to plan in. Either we will need to become better at forecasting or more nimble in responding."
As to what the meteorologists predict going forward, Kossin said, "the evidence continues to mount that hurricane behavior has changed over the past decades, and even the past century, and will continue to change over the next century as the climate continues to change. Globally, tropical cyclones are about 25 percent more likely to be at major-hurricane intensity now than four decades ago. The chances of rapid intensification in the 1980s was about one in 100 in the Atlantic. Nowadays, the chances are 1 in 20."
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