Climate change likely contributed to deadly floods In Pakistan: Report

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution group say climate change may have increased the intensity of rainfall

Human-caused climate change may have played a role in the deadly floods that submerged parts of Pakistan in recent weeks, according to an analysis looking at how much global warming was to blame for this extreme event.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution group say climate change may have increased the intensity of rainfall. However there were many uncertainties in the results, so the team was unable to quantify the scale of the impact.

The team, including scientists from Pakistan, India, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, South Africa, New Zealand, the US and the UK, used published, peer-reviewed methods to perform an event attribution study.

The researchers focussed on two aspects of the event: The annual maximum of the mean 60-day precipitation during June-September over the Indus river basin, and the annual maximum of the mean 5-day precipitation in June-September over the worst hit provinces Sindh and Balochistan.

Pakistan received more than three times its usual rainfall in August, making it the wettest August since 1961. The resulting floods killed over 1,500 people, affected more than 33 million people and destroyed 1.7 million homes.

The two southern provinces, Sindh and Balochistan, each experienced their wettest August ever recorded, receiving 7 and 8 times their usual monthly totals, the report said.

"The flooding occurred as a direct consequence of the extreme monsoon rainfall throughout the summer 2022 season exacerbated by shorter spikes of very heavy rain particularly in August hitting the provinces Sindh and Balochistan," the authors of the study noted.