The journey through the Americas

Picking up from the previous post where I briefly profiled disasters in the Asia Pacific region for the past 10 years, this week I choose to shift my attention to the Americas. Last month, I highlighted a case of Louisiana flood that led to loss of 13 lives and destruction of properties and businesses, and just recently, the world witnessed as Haiti was hit by a major storm - Hurricane Mathew - causing a great deal of devastation. NASA termed the Hurricane as "the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean nation in more than 50 year". But this is just a fraction of the cumulative number of disasters that have occurred in the region, and their accompanying impacts on human and ecological systems.

Hurricane Mathew
© NASA

Overview

The World Bank estimates the population of the Americas at approximately 1 billion people . The countries in this region heavily rely on primary production and exploitation of natural resources for exports. The region boasts of an incredibly rich biodiversity despite continued loss of large forest cover with decreasing deforestation. Aide and colleagues argue that such contrasting dynamics present a level of uncertainty in terms of future alterations resulting from continued land use. Furthermore, such dynamics are highly linked to external factors like population trends and the demand for products (both for internal use and for exports).  As a result of the existing pressures, large biomes like the Amazon forest, are significantly reducing in size. In assessing the "spatial patterns and statistical relationships between deforestation and changes in pasture and soybean areas", Barona et al. 2010 found a correlation between the high rate of deforestation and increasing  pasture and soyabean grounds.

Extreme climate events

Data from EM DAT database indicates that a number of extreme events (drought, extreme temperature, flood, storms and wildfires) in the Americas have occurred in the past decade, although at varying frequency and level of intensity. Of the analysed events, floods and storms tend to occur more times in a years compared to drought, heatwaves and wildfire.

Frequency of extreme events in the Americas, 2006-2015 (Source of data: EM-DAT Database).

The major disasters in the Americas region are Storms and floods , having occurred 315 and 353 times respectively from 2006-2015. A 2014 World Bank report  titled, "Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal" estimated that a approximately 29 million people in the region live in low-lying coastal zones that increases their risk coastal flooding and storm surges. In 2015, for instance, Hurricane Erika killed 37 people in Dominica and caused losses of over 228 million dollars (nearly half of Dominica's annual GDP). Other major hurricanes to hit the region include Hurricane Galveston in 1990, Andrew in 1992, Katrina in 2005, Wilma in 2005, Andres in 2009, Felicia in 2009, Sandy in 2012, Patricia in 2015 among others.

	Drought	Extreme temperature	Flood	Storm	Wildfire
Occurrence	47	38	353	315	42
Total death	4	2,132	6,270	5,515	133
Injured	0	24,262	11,962	9,053	763
Homeless	0	5,247	445,506	282,246	33,901
Total Affected	47,398,840	1,611,939	40,753,477	105,78,466	902,680
Total damage(1,000 USD )	39,303,400	5,194,000	65,134,735	276,715,736	12,136,400

Losses and damages between 2006-2015 (Source of data: EM-DAT Database)

Floods have led to a majority of deaths in the past 10 years followed by storms and extreme events. As a result, an incredibly huge number of people were affected. Although droughts are seen to cause insignificant deaths in the region, the number of people affected tend to be higher compared to those affected by other disasters. More people are also affected by floods and storms. For the United States alone, the National Weather Services' statistics show that floods have caused higher fatalities on average compared to any other disasters.

© NOAA

Conclusion

The frequency and intensity of extreme events in the Americas have been on the increase in the past decade with steep trends in areas where storms and floods are common phenomena. The scenario is likely to worsen in the face of climate change as global warming, coupled with the effect of El Nino Southern Oscillation, increases the risk of more severe weather. As a result, increased losses and damages are bound to be encountered, if adequate measures will not be put in place. 

The Louisiana flood - connecting the dots



©Frank J. Grass

As indicated in my previous post, I will endeavor to highlight a few cases of loss and damage, past and present, across the five geographical regions of the world. One of the main events that have occurred in the recent past is the flooding in Louisiana.

The floods

The month of August will perhaps be remembered by the residents of Louisiana, United States of America (USA), as one of the darkest months to have ever occurred. Described as possibly the worst disaster to ever happen in the U.S, termed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration termed it "a once-in-every-500-years event" - Louisiana flooding event is a clear manifestation of how unprecedented natural hazards can be. Many news outlets - including BBC, CNN, The Guardian, New York Times, among others - reported of how devastating this event, both to the lives and properties of Louisianans.

A state of devastation as household properties in Ascension Parish are destroyed due to floods ©Reauters

The statistics

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) records;

• 13 people died
• 200,000 people were relocated
• 60,646 houses were damaged
• More than 100,000 vehicles destroyed
• More than 20,000 businesses affected
• Roughly 10 billion dollars in economic losses

Other sources however indicate that approximately 507,495 people were either directly or indirectly affected - 11 per cent of Louisiana's population. Notably, less than 20% of all the damaged homes had been insured against such natural hazards hence the burden of 'restoring dignity' lay on the individuals, the government and humanitarian agencies like the Red Cross.

This is not the first flood event to occur in Louisiana. The University of Colorado's Dartmouth Flood Observatory database indicates that flood events of lower magnitude have occurred in Louisiana before. Between 28 August - 7 September 2012, the Hurricane Isaac led to massive flooding in both Southern Mississippi and Louisiana (83938.23 square kilometers) killing one person, displacing around 60,000 people and causing undocumented damages to properties. 

In March 2016, Louisiana was faced with flood as water rose above normal ruining around 1,200 homes and leading to at least 4 deaths and an evacuation of approximately 3,300 people. This resulted into economic losses of 1.3 billion dollars.

The Climate Science...

A recently published synopsis and attribution study done by Wang, Zhao and Gillies (2016) attributes the 'strange' flood to "...intense precipitation produced by a slow-moving tropical low pressure system interacting with an eastward-traveling baroclinic trough to the north". Vahedifard,AghaKouchak,and Jafari,(2016) argues that due to the recent high temperatures experienced in Louisiana, especially around July 2016, moisture built up in the atmosphere and in turn increased the risk of floods.

In my article on the emission gap I explained how the trend in emissions and subsequent global warming poses a risk to ecosystems in terms of losses and damages caused by climate extreme events. This article published on the guardian also explains in depth how climate change led to Louisiana floods.  as the Scientific American answers scientific questions on why, when, how etc

Thoughts..

There is a general agreement that the August flood in Louisiana did not come while ringing the bells loudly enough. No one was prepared for what transpired. When the level of awareness is near zero, people become more vulnerable and the risks of exposure  to hazards increase, resulting into devastating state of affairs, as statistics have shown. People's sense of belonging and endowments are eroded in a flash, and the level of helplessness gets heightened. When it remains business-as-usual in a climatic sense, then you can only expect the situation to worsen in future - for instance, a future clouded with more intense and frequent floods. Is it not surprising that the existing data shows an upward trend in the losses and damages that have occurred in Louisiana since 1980s due to floods. 

In summary, therefore, actions to mitigate against future should therefore be centered on the following;

• Reinforcing physical infrastructure
• Improving observation of weather related events through an integrated system
• Efficient communication of hazard warnings
• Rapid response and insurance schemes
• Efficient management of land use and land use changes
• Managing greenhouse gas emissions, both in the near and long term - this is a global commitment
• Managing people's attitudes towards weather-related information, and events.