AFP UK

Bibi Salma and Mohammad Ali Asgar lost their home three times before shifting to one of Dhaka’s fast-growing slums, just two among millions of Bangladeshis forced to move by rising waters. 

Experts say that this impoverished delta nation of 170 million people is set for the biggest displacement in human history — due to climate change.

“I remember how our house went completely under water during a flood. It happened so quickly, the tip of the roof disappeared in minutes,” said Salma, 35, originally from the island of Bhola 300 kilometres (200 miles) south of Dhaka.

“The river was ferocious. It gradually devoured all our farmland and came near our house one day… Our orchards, homestead — nothing was left,” she told AFP outside the shack they share with their four children. 

The family now live in a 100-square-feet (10-square-metre) room with some cooking pots and one mattress that they all sleep on.

Each home they had was lost to flooding, forcing Asgar to take out loans for the next one. 

Finally unable to borrow more, they left for the teeming slum on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka — a megacity of 20 million people.

Bangladesh, a low-lying nation of criss-crossing muddy rivers at the top of the Bay of Bengal, has long been battered by nature. 

When the Great Bhola Cyclone struck their island in 1970, Asgar’s grandparents and several uncles and aunts were among the nearly half a million people who perished.

“The tidal surge rose up to 20 feet (six metres), and so quickly. It washed away my grandparents and the uncles and aunts in a few seconds, right in front of my father’s eyes,” the 40-year-old said.

“His whole life my father wasn’t able to come to terms with this harrowing tragedy,” Asgar, who earns around $7.50 a day selling sugarcane juice on the roadside, told AFP, wiping tears from his eyes.

– Devoured in the deluge –

Cyclones are happening more and more, scientists say. Better forecasting means that people are usually evacuated in time. But combined with ever-more frequent flooding and river erosion, life for many is becoming untenable.

On the bank of the Padma, a tributary of the Ganges, Afsar Dewan shows where his tin, brick and concrete home stood just a day earlier, before it was swept away along with hundreds of other homes in and around the town of Manikganj.

“There were two madrasas (Islamic seminaries) and a mosque over there. All have now been devoured. The graves were washed away. My parents and uncles were laid to rest there,” he said.

Now the 65-year-old will have to borrow money — the interest can sometimes be more than the loan — but he isn’t joining the exodus from the village to Dhaka, 100 kilometres away, insisting he still has farmland to use.

The International Displacement Monitoring Centre says nearly five million Bangladeshis have been displaced internally between 2008 and 2014, most moving to Dhaka or Chittagong.

According to the World Bank, another 13.3 million people could follow them by 2050.

Large numbers also go abroad. Every year some 700,000 Bangladeshis leave for jobs in the Middle East and South-East Asia. 

Bangladeshis are one of the main nationalities trying to make it illegally into Europe.

– Avoiding discussion –

Dhaka has built tens of thousands of homes in the past two years, more than half going to climate refugees — mainly victims of river erosion, said Tanvir Shakil Joy, an MP and the head of the parliamentary caucus on climate change.

This year Bangladesh plans to build 10,000 more homes for them, disaster management and relief secretary, Mohammad Mohsin, told AFP.

But studies by the state-owned Centre for Geographical and Environment Services, CEGIS, show every year since 2004 some 50,000 people lose their home along the country’s two main Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra.

“Bangladesh is home to dozens of big rivers. If you add people who have lost homes to other rivers, the number people who lose homes annually will be more than 100,000,” said Mominul Haque Sarker, a University of Manchester-trained adviser of CEGIS.  

At the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow, Bangladesh will again highlight the challenges it is facing due to the extreme weather events, and call for international help to help adapt.

“But when we speak about the climate migration in the international forum, the rich nations just avoid the discussion,” Joy said.

“The Western nations, who are mainly responsible for global warming, have yet to recognise that climate change is behind massive migration and displacement,’ he said.   

“They go into panic mode the moment we raise the issues of climate refugees. Their apprehension is if they recognise this they may have to accept some of these refugees.”

A year after a powerful storm sent an avalanche of volcanic rock and sand crashing down, burying her house, Philippine food vendor Florivic Baldoza still lives in an evacuation centre. 

As global warming brings increasingly extreme weather, she now fears “nowhere is safe”. 

Hundreds of families from poor villages around Mayon volcano in Albay province on the country’s most populous island of Luzon are waiting for new homes after Typhoon Goni pounded the region last November.

“That’s the strongest I’ve ever experienced,” Baldoza, 40, told AFP, standing on a mound of dark sand that now covers the house she once shared with her husband and two teenage daughters. 

Several hundred thousand people fled as Goni barrelled towards the archipelago nation — ranked as one of the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

But some residents in San Francisco village — including Baldoza’s family — ignored warnings to shelter in a school, confident a river dike built several years ago would protect them from flooding.

As the most powerful typhoon to hit the country last year dumped heavy rain on an area still sodden from another cyclone a week earlier, Baldoza realised her family was in peril when water began cascading over the several metres high cement wall. 

They bolted to her mother’s house across the road as a devastating mix of water, volcanic sand and boulders smashed the dike further upstream and tore through the village. 

“We were trapped inside the house,” Baldoza told AFP. “We were crying, my husband was separated from us — we thought he was dead.”

Lucky to be alive, but trapped in deep mud, Baldoza and eight relatives, including children, twisted their bodies from side to side to escape, then climbed out a window and up on to the roof. 

Her husband, Alexander, survived by scrambling up a mango tree.

Holding on to a powerline to avoid being blown away by fierce winds, the family clambered over the top of several houses before reaching a taller building. 

“Our house was being hit by boulders, but we couldn’t do anything,” said Baldoza, who watched helplessly as the torrent swept away the family’s motorised tricycle and motorbike. 

“If we hadn’t left our house, we would have died.”

– ‘Disaster capital’ – 

It is not the first time excessive rain has forced Baldoza to relocate.

About 23 years ago, before Baldoza got married, her mother sold their house in a flood-prone area of the same village and moved the family to higher ground.  

“We didn’t expect that we would experience the same thing,” Baldoza said. 

“I don’t think there’s a safe place anymore. Wherever we go, we get flooded.” 

Baldoza visits the site of her house most days as she sells home-cooked meals and soft drinks to workers repairing the damaged dike. 

“I feel like crying because I raised my children here, this is where they were baptised, my husband and I were married here,” she said.  

Baldoza’s family now lives in a classroom in the nearby Marcial O. Ranola Memorial School, which has been converted into an emergency evacuation centre. 

Face-to-face classes have been banned in the Philippines since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.  

Families in Albay province, dubbed the nation’s “disaster capital”, are used to spending a few days every rainy reason in shelters. 

About a quarter of the roughly 20 storms and typhoons to hit the Philippines every year affect the impoverished region, wiping out crops, homes and infrastructure. 

A year after the mudflow upended their lives, a hundred families are still at the school, sleeping in classrooms and cooking in makeshift kitchens.

Despite the hardships, Baldoza tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family. Their pet dogs and cats roam around the classroom which is divided by curtains into sleeping and living areas. 

Her youngest daughter recently turned 18 and they all dressed up for a traditional coming-of-age party. 

But Baldoza worries about the future of her children.  

“The storms are getting stronger,” she said. “How will they survive if we’re gone?”

– ‘You can’t stop typhoons’ – 

Many houses in San Francisco are still partially buried in the volcanic sand and rocks that swamped the village, elevating the ground level and reducing the height of coconut trees.  

Residents have dug trenches around the perimeter of their homes so they can get inside. Some are still shovelling out debris. 

Albay climate change activist Bill Bontigao said Goni was a “wake-up call” and urgent action was needed to prepare the region for stronger cyclones.

“I’m worried that the next generations, my nephews and nieces, won’t have a good future,” Bontigao, 21, told AFP. 

Around 170,000 people were exposed to mudflows from the slopes of Mayon, the country’s most active volcano, said Eugene Escobar, head of the research division of the Albay Public Safety and Emergency Management Office.  

More mudflows were likely as climate change warmed the planet and increased the “frequency and intensity of typhoons and rain”, Escobar told AFP.

The “cheapest solution” was to relocate vulnerable residents to safer areas and provide them with social and economic support, he said.

“You can’t stop typhoons… we have to accept the fact that we are in a disaster-prone area.” 

But Baldoza fears “nowhere is safe” in Guinobatan municipality — including the new village where her family has been given a 25-square-metre house.

It is about a half hour drive from San Francisco where her husband still works as an electrician, but they have no money to rent or buy somewhere closer. 

“Once we move in I’ll have it blessed so we’ll be lucky here,” Baldoza said, standing at the front door of the tiny house, cheerfully painted white, aqua, pink and blue. 

“We hope it’s safer.”

The sheep died first, then the goats. When her only camel perished, Yurub Abdi Jama knew that her life as a herder was over, and joined the exodus from her village to the city.

Her people in northern Somalia had been herding for generations, born on arid land and accustomed to drought. But they could not outlast the final, unrelenting dry spell that scorched the earth and felled their beasts.

“In the past, God would always leave something for us, but now… We had to flee. You go where you can when you lose everything,” said Jama, crouched outside the shanty where she now lives, hundreds of miles away in barren hills outside Hargeisa city.

Jama is a climate migrant — one of tens of thousands on the move in Somalia, where environmental extremes are forcing waves of herders and farmers off the land toward cities ill-equipped to host them. 

In recent years, natural disasters — not conflict — have been the main driver of displacement in Somalia, a war-torn nation in the Horn of Africa that ranks among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change.

Fierce and frequent droughts and floods have uprooted more than three million Somalis since 2016, according to UNHCR data that tracks internal displacement by cause. 

The phenomenon is emptying parts of Somalia’s rural interior and spawning huge camps on the outskirts of cities, as urban populations swell with desperate migrants seeking a new start.

– Great change – 

Most, like Jama, arrive with nothing, and drift in destitution.

She left behind her rural homeland near Aynabo for Hargeisa, an unfamiliar city about 260 kilometres (160 miles) away.

Penniless, she took refuge with other newly-arrived herders in a desolate squatter camp outside town, scavenging enough to build a hut with sticks and cloth for her husband and eight children.

But the pastoral family lacked the skills needed to earn a living in the beleaguered city, where unemployment and poverty is rife, and women beg on potholed street corners. 

At dawn, Jama’s husband trudges off in search of work. Most days, he returns empty handed.

“I make next to nothing from town,” said Uba Adan Juma, who moved to the city three years ago when her goats died in drought, and struggles to support her family in their bleak new setting.

Both women hail from Somaliland, a poor and isolated northwestern region, where climate change has upended life in just a few generations. 

Pastoral communities used to assign names to the great droughts that occurred every decade or so.

“But now, it has changed. Droughts are so frequent, they are nameless,” Shukri Haji Ismail, the region’s environment minister, told AFP.

She said the country of her youth was lush, blanketed by savannas and fruit trees, and inhabited by native birds and wildlife.

A map on her office wall illustrates the sobering reality today: swathes of red indicating land swallowed by the ever-expanding desert, a scourge stretching from Ethiopia to the Gulf of Aden.

“Somaliland is experiencing — literally — the word climate change,” she told AFP.

“It is not what might happen. It is here, it is there, and we are experiencing it… Our people have really suffered.”

– Nowhere to go – 

Somalia has experienced two consecutive seasons of below-average rain, with a third on the way.

Harvests have failed and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network warned in August that hunger will worsen by year’s end, with 3.5 million people in dire need.

The rain that does fall can prove more a curse than a blessing.

Somalia witnessed tremendous flooding in 2020, capped by the strongest tropical storm to hit the country since records began.

Rainfall is projected to become more erratic and extreme over Somalia in coming years, accelerating the flight to cities and stoking greater conflict over limited resources, said Lana Goral from the International Organization for Migration.

“It’s quite the dire outlook,” said Goral, an expert on climate change and migration in Somalia.

The country’s cash-strapped administrations have virtually no capacity to address the unfolding crisis.

Some policymakers have proposed relocating disaster-ravaged communities to the coast as pastoral life becomes increasingly untenable.

“But it takes some time to change the mindsets of the people,” Shukri said.

Hassan Hussein Ibrahim, from Save the Children, said time was not on their side.

The charity assists 11,000 families in Somaliland with cash stipends but many need new skills to start afresh, he said.

“They will also need to adapt,” he told AFP.

It is easier said than done for Jama.

“The drought forced us out,” the 35-year-old said, her head in her hands. “We would never have walked away from that life, the life that we loved.”

But there’s nowhere else left for her to go.

On a recent visit to her village, hoping to find relatives, Jama discovered a ghostly emptiness — no people, no livestock, no signs of life. 

Cruelly, the waterholes were full, with neither man nor beast around to drink from them.

“Life here is difficult as well,” she said, referring to the city, “but where would I run to now?” 

Five years ago, Marilyn Cahuana saw her home and livelihood wash away as Peru endured a particularly brutal El Nino — the cyclical weather phenomenon scientists say is being aggravated by climate change.

With her husband and three children, she went from a tranquil, self-sufficient life on a fertile river bank to a straw-topped hut next to a busy highway, with no access to potable water, sanitation, or electricity.

“It was like starting from nothing,” the 36-year-old wept as she recounted her experience to AFP at the Santa Rosa camp some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) north of Lima where hundreds of families displaced by the 2017 climate catastrophe were offered refuge.

“We had to buy everything anew, a bed, wardrobes, toilet… because the water took everything.”

What was meant to be a temporary arrangement has lasted five years for about 2,000 families from villages and towns ravaged by the flooding and thrown together in a camp of ramshackle zinc and straw huts and tents.

“We have been completely forgotten by the state,” said Cahuana’s 40-year-old husband, Leopoldo Namuche, who scrapes together a living driving a motorcycle taxi. 

The couple keeps few ducks, turkeys and pigs to eat, and Cahuana bakes biscuits to sell to neighbors.

She reminisces longingly of her former life as a small-scale farmer in the hamlet of Santa Rosa, about 20 km away, where they grew their own produce next to the Piura river and had a school, clinic, and other basic services nearby.

“We never thought we would live like this,” added Namuche, his wife is pregnant with a fourth child to join Greysi, 12, Hans, nine, and two-year-old Gael.

“It is because of El Nino.”

– More severe El Nino –

With a cycle of every few years, the weather system causes an abnormal warming of the Pacific ocean which in northern Peru translates into excessive rainfall, and drought in other parts of the country.

In 2017, during the warmest five-year period ever recorded on Earth, El Nino hit Peru with particular fierceness.

Torrential rains and floods claimed over 100 lives, and according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) displaced some 300,000 people — one percent of the country’s 33 million population.

El Nino-related devastation is nothing new to Peru. In 1998, 500 people died, and in 1982-3 the toll was about 9,000 from flooding and subsequent disease outbreak.

Manuel Pulgar Vidal, a former Peruvian environment minister and now climate and energy leader at green group WWF, said evidence was accumulating “that these events… are more frequent and more severe due to climate change.”

A 2019 research article published in the PNAS science journal said El Nino events, which hit countries around the equator hardest, have become stronger since the 1970s due to “a background warming in the western Pacific warm pool” — a mass of high-temperature water where the weather system originates.

If this warming continued, the article warned, “more frequent extreme El Nino events will induce profound socioeconomic consequences.”

– No school, no shop –

A few kilometers from Santa Rosa is another refuge for climate migrants, named San Pablo. It houses about 600 families. 

There are no shops, and residents rely on wells for water to drink and irrigate vegetable patches in a place where day temperatures can reach 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit), with few trees to provide shade.

At night, temperatures plummet but the only fuel for cooking or heating is firewood. Only a few have access to solar panels or car batteries for lighting.

The nearest medical care is at Catacaos, some 30 minutes by car. Without electricity, there is no internet for the kids to follow classes online since the community school closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic.

“Here, we sleep about four people,” said Carlos Javier Silupu Raimundo, pointing to a tiny plywood “room” with a mattress on a sand-and-stone floor.

“We have to be careful because there is always a danger; there could be a scorpion, a snake.”

Another San Pablo resident, Esther Juarez Elias, appealed for better living conditions and support: “above all the light, light is the main thing we need.” 

Experts say climate change has boosted the number of internally displaced Peruvians.

“Such disaster displacement can take a high psychosocial toll on people who have lost their livelihoods and assets, including homes and other infrastructure,” said a 2021 IOM report on Peru.

One in five people displaced by the 2017 event, it said, still had no access to water, and almost half had post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Displacement pressure will likely increase, considering projections of more intense rainfall events and related flooding, landslides and riverbank erosion, and more heatwaves in many parts of the country,” said the IOM report.

Lazaro Yat looked on helplessly as his 17-year-old son left the family home in Guatemala and embarked on the perilous journey to the United States as an undocumented migrant.

Two powerful hurricanes that struck the north of the Central American country in 2020 decimated cardamom crops, leaving thousands of indigenous people destitute.

“Everyone suffered because their crops were left submerged in water,” Yat told AFP from Cerro Azul, a tiny village of barely 500 people at the foot of the mountains in Quiche department.

Hurricanes Eta and Iota ripped through this region in October and November 2020 leaving 200 people dead and massive damage throughout Central America.

Experts say climate change is contributing to ever more devastating weather episodes.

A year ago the banks of the Azul river that runs along the village broke and flooded streets, homes, fields and pastures.

The vast green fields of cardamom were submerged for four months and when the waters receded, they left behind rotting vegetation and sterile soil.

The ground will recover, says Yat, a 42-year-old member of the Mayan Q’eqchi people, but cardamom takes three to four years to bear fruit.

He now survives by growing corn on hills that remained above the flood waters.

– ‘Nothing left’ –

Oscar, Yat’s eldest of four sons who used to help him in the fields, was one of many young people who could not wait and instead set off on the 120-kilometer trek to the Mexican border, hoping to continue on to the United States.

“Some people went northwards (towards the US) because there was no way of surviving here,” said Yat.

Oscar “went for the same reason: we have nothing left. We didn’t want to send him but he decided to go … And we couldn’t do anything.”

The teenager left in February on a dangerous journey in which many migrants are murdered, kidnapped, tortured or exploited.

Two months later he managed to cross the Mexican border. Now 18, he works in a baker’s in Massachusetts.

But he sends home “very little” money because he is still paying off the people-trafficker — known as a coyote — that helped him get to the United States.

Two of Oscar’s teenage cousins also left.

They are among more than a million Central Americans displaced by the impact of Eta and Iota, according to a study by the International Organization for Migration.

For Alex Guerra, director of Guatemala’s institute of investigation on climate change, such natural disasters provoked by global warming are a growing “trigger” for migration in the region.

Thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorans try every year to reach the United States illegally.

They are fleeing poverty and violence, and extreme weather events can “provide the last push that makes people decide to migrate,” Guerra told AFP.

In September, the World Bank said climate change could prompt 216 million people to migrate by 2050, including 17 million in Latin America.

– ‘We’re already scared’ –

Cerro Azul residents say they never before had flooding like that provoked by Eta and Iota.

They were part of “the most active” Atlantic cyclone season in history, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Of the 30 tropical storms in 2020, 13 were hurricanes, the study said.

Central America is particularly vulnerable to climate change given its location in a cyclone zone, as well as being home to earthquakes, active volcanoes and affected by the El Nino and La Nina phenomenon.

The problems are exacerbated by massive social inequality, poor planning and weak infrastructure.

“There are places where there is flooding more regularly than before, year after year. We have years where there is flooding and drought, sometimes in the same places,” said Guerra.

The wooden huts with zinc roofs of Cerro Azul, a remote village accessed only by 325 kilometers of dangerous roads and dirt tracks, provide a poor defense against the elements.

“Whenever it rains hard we’re on alert to see what’s coming because we’re already scared,” said Sonia Choc, dressed in a typically colorful Guatemalan outfit.

Since her cardamom crops were destroyed, she has been growing vegetables and rearing chickens. Others from the village have left to find work as laborers.

Yat has reached the end of his tether and is on the verge of joining the exodus.

“I think next year, or this year, I’m leaving. I have nothing left here, I can’t do any more,” he said.

Coal-rich Australia unveiled a much-delayed 2050 net zero emissions target Tuesday, but shied away from setting more ambitious goals ahead of a landmark UN climate summit.

Widely seen as a climate laggard, Australia is one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters and its conservative government has resisted climate action for most of its eight-year term.

Announcing the shift, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australians wanted a strategy that “does the right thing on climate change and secures their future in a changing world”.

However, he refused to strengthen 2030 emissions reduction targets seen as crucial for meaningful climate change action, while vowing to work to keep mines operating for as long as possible.

“We want our heavy industries, like mining, to stay open, remain competitive and adapt, so they remain viable for as long as global demand allows,” he wrote in an opinion article released by his office.

Australia has previously agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent on 2005 levels by 2030, a target Morrison has claimed the country will “meet and beat”.

“We won’t be lectured by others who do not understand Australia,” he wrote.

“We will also not be breaking the pledge we made at the last election by changing our 2030 emission reductions targets.”

The announcement comes just days before Morrison departs for next month’s United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Australia’s reluctance to act had been criticised by close allies such as the United States and Britain, as well as Pacific island neighbours that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The coalition government also found itself increasingly out of step with Australians’ attitudes as they suffered a series of climate-worsened droughts, bushfires and floods.

A 2021 poll by the Lowy Institute think tank found 78 percent of Australians back a 2050 net zero target, while 63 percent support a national ban on new coal mines.

The country’s greatest natural tourist drawcard, the Great Barrier Reef, has been badly damaged by waves of mass coral bleaching as ocean temperatures rise.

– ‘Sold a pup’ –

Mark Kenny, a professor at the Australian Studies Institute in Canberra, said domestic and international pressures had made it “more and more unviable for the coalition to cling to its essentially denialist position”.

But Kenny warned Australia’s announcement amounted to little more than a shift in rhetoric for the resource-reliant nation.

“This commitment is not significant in reality. I think if the world takes this seriously, they have been sold a pup,” he told AFP.

Morrison, whose government routinely approves new coal projects, did not reveal details of the plan.

Nor did he detail what concessions had been made to the government’s junior coalition partner — long dominated by climate sceptics and pro-coal interests — after weeks of tense internal negotiations.

But he said Australia would pursue a “technology not taxes” strategy, which aims to protect carbon-heavy industries and keep power bills down while transitioning to green energy.

Under the plan, money is expected to be funnelled toward investment in technologies “like hydrogen and low cost solar” as well as the fossil fuel industry and rural electoral battlegrounds.

Tuesday’s 2050 commitment trails behind more ambitious announcements from Australian states and corporations, including mining giant Rio Tinto.

Australia’s major coal customers such as India and China have already indicated they will phase out thermal coal, and technological advances have made the future of metallurgical coal — used to make steel — increasingly uncertain.

Ahead of the 12-day Glasgow summit, the UN says more than 130 countries have set or are considering a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, a target it says is “imperative” to safeguard a livable climate.

A “bomb cyclone” brought floods and landslides to drought-hit California as forest fire-scarred landscapes were unable to soak up record-breaking rains.

Severe thunderstorms deluged the northern part of the state, with strong winds pummeling the area, toppling powerlines and trees and leaving at least two people dead.

The cyclone roared in from the Pacific Ocean and struck San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the states of Oregon and Washington, further north, on Sunday.

It also lashed British Columbia, Canada’s western-most province, leaving thousands without power.

Two people were killed when a tree fell on their vehicle near Seattle.

California’s state capital, Sacramento, which saw no rain at all in the six months to September, was deluged with 14 centimeters (five and a half inches), beating a record that had stood since 1880.

The rains inundated towns, leaving some streets waist-deep in water, photographs showed.

In Ross, a small city in the northern part of the state, rescue crews were scrambling to remove trees blown down by the winds. 

In nearby San Rafael, streets were completely flooded, with water rising above the height of vehicle tires, while further south in Marin City, crews were working to redirect water into drains. 

Since the storms began Sunday night, nearly 400,000 people have been left without power because of the high winds, utility PG&E said. 

– Global warming increases extreme weather –

Meteorologists say the desiccated landscape of the US west finds it difficult to absorb heavy rains, and water just washes destructively off the surface.

That problem is exacerbated by the huge forest fires that have torn through the region, burning thousands of square kilometers (miles).

The “burn scars” these blazes leave behind are particularly vulnerable to flash flooding, having no vegetation left to soak up the rains.

A years-long drought in the western United States has left whole swathes of the countryside vulnerable to fires that now burn hotter and longer.

Scientists say global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels has worsened this drought.

It also increases extreme weather events in all their forms.

A “bomb cyclone” forms when air pressure drops abruptly as the storm gathers strength. 

The phenomenon sucked moisture from the Pacific and created an “atmospheric river,” a vapor cloud that can unleash heavy precipitation, AccuWeather meteorologist Jon Porter said.

The powerful storm continued to move through the state on Monday, with several cities recording persistent rainfall. 

The storm has been good news for some, with a heavy dumping of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range allowing ski resorts to open earlier than usual.

A “bomb cyclone” brought floods and landslides to drought-hit California as forest fire-scarred landscapes were unable to soak up record-breaking rains.

Severe thunderstorms deluged the northern part of the state, with strong winds pummeling the area, toppling powerlines and trees and leaving at least two people dead.

The cyclone roared in from the Pacific Ocean and struck San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the states of Oregon and Washington, further north, on Sunday.

It also lashed British Columbia, Canada’s western-most province, leaving thousands without power.

Two people were killed when a tree fell on their vehicle near Seattle.

California’s state capital, Sacramento, which saw no rain at all in the six months to September, was deluged with 14 centimeters (five and a half inches), beating a record that had stood since 1880.

The rains inundated towns, leaving some streets waist-deep in water, photographs showed.

In Ross, a small city in the northern part of the state, rescue crews were scrambling to remove trees blown down by the winds. 

In nearby San Rafael, streets were completely flooded, with water rising above the height of vehicle tires, while further south in Marin City, crews were working to redirect water into drains. 

Since the storms began Sunday night, nearly 400,000 people have been left without power because of the high winds, utility PG&E said. 

– Global warming increases extreme weather –

Meteorologists say the desiccated landscape of the US west finds it difficult to absorb heavy rains, and water just washes destructively off the surface.

That problem is exacerbated by the huge forest fires that have torn through the region, burning thousands of square kilometers (miles).

The “burn scars” these blazes leave behind are particularly vulnerable to flash flooding, having no vegetation left to soak up the rains.

A years-long drought in the western United States has left whole swathes of the countryside vulnerable to fires that now burn hotter and longer.

Scientists say global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels has worsened this drought.

It also increases extreme weather events in all their forms.

A “bomb cyclone” forms when air pressure drops abruptly as the storm gathers strength. 

The phenomenon sucked moisture from the Pacific and created an “atmospheric river,” a vapor cloud that can unleash heavy precipitation, AccuWeather meteorologist Jon Porter said.

The powerful storm continued to move through the state on Monday, with several cities recording persistent rainfall. 

The storm has been good news for some, with a heavy dumping of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range allowing ski resorts to open earlier than usual.

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record levels last year, the United Nations said Monday, in a stark warning as Britain’s Boris Johnson admitted being “very worried” about the COP26 summit going awry.

The UN’s blunt report on rising global warming comes as Prime Minister Johnson, the COP26 host, said it was “very, very far from clear that we’ll get the progress that we need”.

“I’m very worried because it might go wrong… it’s touch and go,” Johnson said, though he remained hopeful a deal can be done at the 12-day climate talks to reduce carbon emissions and limit future temperature rises.

Highlighting the difficulties ahead, coal-intensive Australia on Monday unveiled a long-awaited 2050 target to reach net zero emissions — while dismissing any upgrade to its 2030 goals.

“We want our heavy industries, like mining, to stay open, remain competitive and adapt, so they remain viable for as long as global demand allows,” conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, is being held in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said that continued rising greenhouse gas emissions would result in more extreme weather and wide-ranging impacts on the environment, the economy and humanity.

The WMO said the economic slowdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a temporary decline in new emissions, but had no discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates.

The organisation’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said the annual rate of increase last year was above the yearly average between 2011 and 2020 — and the trend continued in 2021.

– ‘Way off track’ –

The WMO said that as long as emissions continue, global temperatures will continue to rise.

And given the long life of carbon dioxide (CO2), the temperature levels already observed will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas.

“At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” he warned.

“We are way off track.”

The WMO said that with continued rising greenhouse gas emissions, alongside rising temperatures, the planet could expect more extreme weather. 

“We need to revisit our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life. The needed changes are economically affordable and technically possible,” said Taalas. “There is no time to lose.”

The WMO also said that alarmingly, the southeast part of the Amazon rainforest, long a carbon sink, has now become a source of carbon emissions due to deforestation.

– ‘The disaster gets closer’ –

The three major greenhouses gases are CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most important, accounting for around 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate.

CO2 concentrations reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2020, up 2.5 ppm, and is at 149 percent of the pre-industrial level in 1750, the WMO said.

Methane averages reached a new high of 1,889 parts per billion in 2020, up 11 ppb on the year before, and is at 262 percent of the pre-industrial benchmark.

Nitrous oxide averages reached 333.2 ppb, up 1.2 ppb, and is now at 123 percent of 1750 levels.

Euan Nisbet, from the University of London’s Greenhouse Gas Group, compared the greenhouse gas measurements to “skidding into a car crash.”

“The disaster gets closer and closer but you can’t stop it. You can clearly see the crash ahead, and all you can do is howl.”

Dave Reay, director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, said the report provided a “brutally frank” assessment of COP achievements so far: “An epic fail.”

Meanwhile, a decade-old target for rich countries to contribute $100 billion a year to help poorer ones fight climate change should be attainable in 2023, according to analysis by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The target was meant to have been reached last year, and the failure of developed nations to do so has become a key point of contention heading into Glasgow.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler pledged more than $1 billion for new environmental initiatives on Monday, taking further steps to bolster the environmental credentials of the world’s top oil exporter.

And two days after targeting carbon neutrality by 2060, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman promised to contribute 15 percent of $10.4 billion to fund the “circular carbon economy” and provide “clean fuel” to help feed 750 million people worldwide.

Coal-rich Australia on Tuesday unveiled a much-delayed 2050 net zero emissions target, but shied away from setting more ambitious goals ahead of a landmark UN climate summit.

Announcing the move, conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australians want a plan that “does the right thing on climate change and secures their future in a changing world.”

Widely seen as a climate laggard, Australia is one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters and has long resisted adopting a carbon-neutral target.

However, Morrison refused to strengthen 2030 emissions reduction targets seen as crucial for meaningful climate change action, saying he would work to keep mines open.

“We want our heavy industries, like mining, to stay open, remain competitive and adapt, so they remain viable for as long as global demand allows,” he wrote in an opinion article released by his office.

Australia has previously agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent on 2005 levels, a target Morrison has claimed the country will “meet and beat.”

“We won’t be lectured by others who do not understand Australia. The Australian Way is all about how you do it, and not if you do it. It’s about getting it done,” he wrote.

“We will also not be breaking the pledge we made at the last election by changing our 2030 emission reductions targets.”

The 2050 commitment comes just days before Morrison departs for next month’s United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Canberra has come under growing criticism for failing to act sooner, including from close allies the United States and Britain, as well as Pacific island neighbours which are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The government also found itself increasingly out of step with public attitudes, with successive polls showing widespread support for climate action as Australia suffered a series of climate-worsened droughts, bushfires and floods.

Morrison did not reveal details of the plan or what concessions had been made to the government’s junior coalition partner — long dominated by climate sceptics and pro-coal interests — after weeks of tense internal negotiations.

But he said Australia would continue pursuing his “technology not taxes” strategy, which aims to protect carbon-heavy industries and keep power bills down while transitioning to green energy.

“Key to this approach is investment in new energy technologies, like hydrogen and low cost solar, to ensure our manufacturing, resources, agricultural and transport sectors can secure their future, especially in rural and regional areas,” he wrote.

The upcoming 12-day meeting in Scotland will be the biggest climate conference since landmark talks in Paris in 2015, and is seen as a critical step in setting worldwide emissions targets to slow global warming.

The UN says more than 130 countries have set or are considering a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, a target it says is “imperative” to safeguard a livable climate.