Uncertain times

Global monitors have warned that 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record, marked by climate extremes; the vulnerable population is the most affected

In a world where global warming and climate change have become buzzwords, everything seems to be in a flux. There’s either a deluge or a drought. Disasters like forest fires and floods seem to be increasing in frequency, pushing vulnerable people to the edge.

This month, extensive flooding impacted the Central Asian regions of Kazakhstan and Russia, specifically in the Ural Mountains and Siberia. The Ural river, which rises in the Ural mountains and flows through Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea, burst through embankment dams in the Urals city of Orsk on April 5 and flooded parts of the city of Orenburg.

At least 12,000 people in Russia are recorded as having been evacuated. In Kazakhstan, more than 97,000 people have been evacuated. The worst hit areas mostly border Russia and are crossed by rivers flowing from or to Russia.

In a 2009 research commissioned by the U.S. National Intelligence Council on the impact of climate change on Russia to 2030, the authors said the rise in temperatures would lead to a series of complex issues for Russia.

Among them were the increased frequency of extreme climatic events including heavy rain, fires in Siberian peatlands and more frequent flooding of Russia's Arctic rivers due to heavy rain and earlier breakup of river ice.

The European Union's climate change monitoring service recently said that March 2024 was the warmest on record. Each of the last 10 months ranked as the world’s hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin. The 12 months ending with March also ranked as the planet's hottest ever recorded 12month period, C3S said.

Extreme weather and exceptional temperatures have wreaked havoc this year. Wildfires affecting Mexico have destroyed over 3,000 hectares of forested areas. Heatwaves in Vietnam have caused severe drought in central Ninh Thuan province, badly affecting vegetation and lifestock.

Closer home, the India Meteorological Department has said the country will see more than the average number of heatwave days this year between April and June. Heat waves can be lethal as they affect the ability to breathe, making the old and young particularly vulnerable.

Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore where natural phenomena such as climate change are studied, said three factors determine heat waves; El Nino, a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific, an increase in global temperatures and humaninduced climate change.

GETTY IMAGES Danger zone: A firefighter walks by train tracks near a paper factory affected by a forest fire in Veracruz, Mexico on March 26.

AP To the rescue: Two men deliver food on boats in a flooded area in Orenburg, Russia on April 11. The Ural river had burst through embankment dams.

AFP Quick shift: The settlement of Zarechny in northern Kazakhstan, from where thousands of people were evacuated after floods on April 10.

AFP Land at risk: A farmer walks along a field abandoned due to saline intrusion after a drought in Vietnam’s southern Ben Tre province on March 19.

GETTY IMAGES Drop by drop: A woman collects water from a storage tanker outside her home in Haripura village in Rajasthanon March 31. India, too, is experiencing heatwaves.