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Climate Change Made Libya Flooding Up to 50 Times More Likely, 50% More Intense
"This devastating disaster shows how climate change-fueled extreme weather events are combining with human factors to create even bigger impacts," said the head of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center.
Sep 19, 2023
International scientists announced Tuesday that an event like the extreme rain that led to deadly flooding in Libya earlier this month "has become up to 50 times more likely and up to 50% more intense compared to a 1.2°C cooler climate," or the preindustrial world.
Those were among the findings of a World Weather Attribution (WWA) analysis of torrential rainfall in several countries across the Mediterranean during the first two weeks of September, conducted by researchers from Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
"The research is top notch and follows established... rapid attribution principles, grounded in peer-reviewed methods and data that pass highest quality standards," said Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the Leipzig University in Germany not involved with the analysis.
While the storm dubbed Daniel by Greek meteorologists impacted various countries, the African nation of Libya—which has been in chaos since 2011—was by far the worst affected, largely due to a pair of dams that failed and let floodwaters kill thousands in the city of Derna.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Saturday that at least 3,958 people were killed and over 9,000 more were still missing. Some groups have reported higher figures, such as the Libyan Red Crescent, which previously put the death toll at 11,300.
Haustein noted that in terms of the death and destruction in Libya, the WWA researchers "discuss a host of confounding factors (long-lasting armed conflict, political instability, potential design flaws and poor maintenance of dams) that have led to an extreme level of vulnerability and exposure. All independent of climate change."
"Accordingly, they do not speculate about the role of climate change regarding damage and fatalities," the scientist explained. "Rather they highlight that the lack of early warning action and disaster relief has played a critical role in worsening the destructive outcome. The implications as far as adaptation is concerned are crucially important nonetheless, especially in light of the drastically increased risk for an event like this to happen again within the coming decades (rather than twice a millennium)."
Julie Arrighi, interim director at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, which had researchers working on the WWA report, said that
"this devastating disaster shows how climate change-fueled extreme weather events are combining with human factors to create even bigger impacts, as more people, assets, and infrastructure are exposed and vulnerable to flood risks."
"However, there are practical solutions that can help us prevent these disasters from becoming routine," Arrighi stressed, "such as strengthened emergency management, improved impact-based forecasts and warning systems, and infrastructure that is designed for the future climate."
The WWA team also found that for the region including Greece and parts of Bulgaria and Turkey, human-induced climate change made an extreme event up to 10 times more likely and up to 40% more intense. As the WWA report notes, the flooding led to at least 17 deaths in Greece, seven in Turkey, six in Spain, and four in Bulgaria.
"The worst-affected region in Greece, the Thessaly plain, accounts for over one-quarter of the country's agricultural production, the report says. "After more than 75,000 hectares were inundated, it is estimated that the agricultural sector in Thessaly will need five years to recover from the damages and for the lands to become fertile again."
Friederike Otto, a climatologist at the U.K.'s Imperial College London who worked on the WWA analysis, said Tuesday that "the Mediterranean is a hotspot of climate change-fueled hazards."
"After a summer of devastating heatwaves and wildfires with a very clear climate change fingerprint, quantifying the contribution of global warming to these floods proved more challenging," Otto added. "But there is absolutely no doubt that reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to all types of extreme weather is paramount for saving lives in the future."
The analysis was released on the eve of the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit in New York City—which some world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, have decided to skip despite demands for bold action, particularly from rich nations that are largely responsible for the planetary emergency.
Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said Tuesday that "the disaster in Derna is yet another example of what climate change is already doing to our weather."
"Obviously multiple factors in Libya turned Storm Daniel into a human catastrophe; it wasn't climate change alone. But climate change did make the storm much more extreme and much more intense and that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives," Chapagain continued. "That should be a wake-up call for the world to fulfill the commitment on reducing emissions, to ensure climate adaptation funding, and tackle the issues of loss and damage."
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Saudi Bombings Kill Scores of Civilians--Including Children--in Yemen
"America is complicit in this," said one critic of "this horrific war that Biden and his senior officials once promised to end."
Jan 21, 2022
A series of Saudi-led airstrikes were blamed Friday for killing scores of people in Yemen as civilians, including children, continue to suffer deadly consequences of the U.S.-backed conflict that has lasted for years.
"It seems to have been a horrific act of violence."
Overnight bombings included one that targeted a prison holding mostly migrants in the northern city of Sa'ada, an area described as being under the control of Houthi forces.
"It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence," said Ahmed Mahat, MSF's (Doctors Without Borders) head of mission in Yemen.
A hospital in the city "has received 138 wounded and 70 dead" and is "so overwhelmed that they can't take any more patients," MSF said.
\u201cThere were also air strikes in Sana\u2019a last night, including on the airport, and we have received reports of air strikes in many other governorates across the north of #Yemen. Since this morning the internet has been completely cut off.\u201d— MSF International (@MSF International) 1642775683
\u201cFacilities used for detention in Sa'ada, #Yemen, were hit early this morning, killing and injuring over a hundred detainees.\n\nEmergency workers were searching for victims amidst the rubble.\u201d— ICRC (@ICRC) 1642777446
Strikes also hit further south in the port city of Hodeida. According toAgence France-Presse: "Video footage showed bodies in the rubble and dazed survivors after an air attack from the Saudi Arabia-led pro-government coalition took out a telecommunications hub. Yemen suffered a nationwide internet blackout, a web monitor said."
The humanitarian group Save the Children said that at least three children, as well as more than 60 adults, were reported killed by the series of strikes, though the number of confirmed casualties would likely rise.
The children killed as a result of the Hodeidah strike had been playing on a nearby football field, the group said.
"Children are bearing the brunt of this crisis," said Gillian Moyes, the group's country director in Yemen.
"The human toll that we witness in Yemen is unacceptable."
"They are being killed and maimed, watching as their schools and hospitals are being destroyed, and denied access to basic lifesaving services," she said. "They are asking us: Does it matter if I die?"
"The initial casualties report from Sa'ada is horrifying," Moyes added. "Migrants seeking better lives for themselves and their families, Yemeni civilians injured by the dozens, is a picture we never hoped to wake up to in Yemen."
In the U.S., the Biden administration--like previous administrations--has faced calls to stop supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons and other support being used to wage the bombing campaign on Yemen that's estimated to have killed over 300,000 Yemenis since 2015 and unleashed what the United Nations called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
In The New Republic earlier this month, the Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi and Annelle Sheline wrote:
Despite Biden's promise to end the war in Yemen and his pledge to make the Saudis "pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are," he has fallen back into America's hegemonic role in the Middle East: taking sides, making America a party to conflicts, and selling more weapons--U.S. interest, peace, stability, and human rights be damned.
Responding to news of the overnight airstrikes, journalist Spencer Ackerman tweeted: "America is complicit in this, as it has been complicit in every Saudi or UAE airstrike of this horrific war that Biden and his senior officials once promised to end. I hope they see these children when they sleep at night."
The International Committee of the Red Cross sounded alarm about the recent intensification of violence in Yemen.
"It is essential that we protect the lives of people in armed conflict. The human toll that we witness in Yemen is unacceptable," Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC's regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement Thursday.
"Civilians living in densely populated areas have been exposed to increased attacks," he continued, "causing death and injury and deepening the psychological trauma among the affected communities after seven years of war."
The deadly strikes came after a Tuesday statement from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also expessing concern about the uptick in violence in Yemen.
"In recent days," said spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, "there have been dozens of airstrikes and artillery strikes launched by the parties with seemingly little regard for civilians."
"The fighting has damaged civilian objects and critical infrastructure, including telecommunication towers and water reservoirs, as well as hospitals in Sana'a and Taizz. With frontlines shifting rapidly over large areas, civilians are also exposed to the constant threat of landmines," she said.
"As has been shown time and time again," added Shamdasani, "there is no military solution to the conflict in Yemen."
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Red Cross Holds a Press Conference In Haiti. It Doesn't Go Well.
Haitian reporters demand answers from the Red Cross but don’t get many.
Jun 13, 2015
Haitian journalists grilled an American Red Cross official Wednesday about the group's Haiti program, but the official declined to provide any new details of how it spent nearly $500 million donated after the 2010 earthquake.
The Red Cross called a press conference, held at the Le Plaza Hotel in downtown Port-Au-Prince, in response to ProPublica and NPR's story published last week revealing a string of Red Cross failures in Haiti.
The American Red Cross official at the press conference was repeatedly interrupted by Haitian reporters frustrated that he would not give specifics on its spending:
The official, Walker Dauphin, criticized our story for making "misleading allegations" and said that "in total, more than a hundred projects were implemented."
But Haiti's most prominent newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, wrote that Dauphin was merely "retracing the broad strokes of the interventions and expenses ... while avoiding going into detail." The paper ran the story on its front page under the headline, "When the Red Cross drowns the fish," a reference to sidestepping a touchy subject.
Jean-Max Bellerive, who was prime minister of Haiti when the earthquake hit, also publicly criticized the American Red Cross, telling Le Nouvelliste that the Haitian government must "take legal actions to demand accountability."
In the United States, Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., has called for the House oversight committee to hold hearings on the Red Cross' Haiti program. The story has also prompted anger and calls for investigation in a number of states. Watch this video where an activist and Georgia state senator interrupt a Red Cross spokesman: "They do not deny anything that's been said and just direct you to some website," said Sen. Vincent Fort.
Red Cross spokeswoman Jana Sweeney said in a statement: "The Red Cross is happy to talk with any member of Congress who has questions about our relief work in Haiti, or elsewhere."
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