Typhoon & Floods Kill Hundreds, Displace Thousands
Extreme weather in several countries over the weekend has led to hundreds of deaths and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. The death toll from Category 5 Super Typhoon Rai, which hit the Philippines late last week, has now risen to more than 200. Officials are still assessing the full impact of the storm, which is one of the strongest to hit the region in recent years, displacing at least 300,000 people. Meanwhile, storms in Malaysia and Iraq also caused deadly flooding late last week and over the weekend. Malaysia got as much rain in one day as usually falls in one month, leading to severe flooding that killed at least three people and necessitated the rescue of more than 30,000. In Erbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, at least 12 are dead after torrential rains cause flash flooding. Human-caused climate change is making major cyclonic storms more intense and fueling increased rapid intensification, as well as increasing flooding risks by fueling extreme precipitation. “Disasters are getting worse and what the scientists have been saying in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – it has already been happening in the Philippines,” said Angeli Cantillana, a communications campaigner for Greenpeace South-east Asia.
(Rai: New York Times, BBC, CNN, Associated Press, Reuters, Guardian, Axios, Al Jazeera; Malaysia: Reuters $, Al Jazeera, AFP, Independent; Iraq: CNN, Reuters $, Al Jazeera, AP; Climate Signals background: Flooding, Hurricanes)
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