Yes, our climate is truly changing
Flooding in Houston, Mumbai should serve as stark reminders that we are to blame for natural disasters
pare a thought this morning for the residents of two great cities that are 14,000 kilometres apart and almost as opposite geographically and culturally as you can get on this planet, but both are struggling to cope with the fury that mother nature can unleash. For the past five days, the residents of Houston and the surrounding areas have been inundated by record-busting levels of rainfall, following Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. Harvey still isn’t finished, and the weather system has made another landfall over the Texas-Louisiana border to dump yet more rain on the beleaguered region. The flooding has dropped more than a metre of rain in Houston, making it the worst in recorded history and represents a new level of natural disaster that town planning and municipal officials simply hadn’t contemplated in their planning sessions.
Across the globe, the city of Mumbai is now crippled by the effects of heavier-than-usual monsoon rains, with more than 1,000 lives lost across India as a result of the downpours and deluges. Schools have shut, transport links are in chaos and the normally resilient city is struggling to cope with the high water levels and the sheer volume of rain falling from the dark skies.
Is it a coincidence, then, that these two cities so far apart are now suffering from deluges at the same time? For the past decade, meteorologists, climatologists, environmental researchers and the scientific community at large have been warning us that weather patterns are changing — and that the rate of change is quickening.
We have also been told that we are to blame, doing irrevocable damage to our environment, heating up the planet at a greater rate than ever before, producing more carbon emissions and greenhouse gases that exacerbate the warming trends.
Yes, it might be a coincidence that both cities are now enduring such floods at the same time, but it is not a coincidence that the floods have happened in the first instance.
These natural disasters, the loss of life, the physical damage, the emotional toll and the financial costs of mopping up, should be a warning to each and every one of us that the world we are living in has indeed changed, that it is no longer acting in a predictable manner, and that severe weather events are more likely to impact us than ever before. They are clear signs, should there still be doubters, that our climate has changed — and mankind is the one to blame.