More monsoon rain is forecast to fall on Pakistan’s flooded fields in days ahead. Rainfall 10 times heavier than usual has already swollen the Indus river, creating a vast lake. A third of the country, an area the size of the UK, is under water. Torrents have ripped away mountainsides, torn buildings off foundations, and swept through the countryside, turning whole districts into inland seas. At least 1,200 have died, a million homes have been destroyed or damaged, 162 bridges and 2,000 miles of roads swept away. More than 33 million people are affected – one in every seven Pakistanis – and reconstruction will cost more than €10 billion.
With much of the country’s farmland swamped, the destruction of crops is compounding food shortages and hunger and fuelling an inflation rate that has topped 42 per cent this month. Desperately-needed international support is beginning to flow, but aid workers are having difficulty reaching stranded villages in the vast southeastern Sindh province which has experienced rains five times the annual average.
This monsoon season, after several months of heat waves, brought rainfall to Pakistan of nearly three times the last three decades’ average. Scientists also estimate that the drought-intensifying heat was 30 times as likely to occur because of human-caused global warming, while a recent study predicts that exceptionally wet monsoons in the Indian subcontinent are six times more likely to happen during the 21st century, even if humanity reduces carbon emissions.
Global warming is sharply increasing the likelihood of extreme rain in South Asia, home to a quarter of humanity. Heavy rainfall in an area already grappling with drought is particularly damaging and the monsoon has also become more erratic; stronger downpours have been interspersed with longer dry spells. Instead of the steady rains that reliably nourish crops, more precipitation comes intermittently. And extreme swings between dry periods and deluges can become part of what will be a continent-wide broader cycle of severe social and economic pressures.