The end of March traditionally brings with it dry weather to Thailand, but this year a powerful storm has settled over the Malay Peninsula and brought with it up to up to 1,270 millimeters (50 inches) of rain in little over a week. As a result, the rain has caused landslides and flooded 8 provinces , killed 13 and left 842,324 people affected as of April 1, according to the Thailand government.
Philippines is now suffering tremendous flooding most likely related to climate change — nice Christmas present, eh? The only way global warming deniers (or, “science deniers,” as I think I’m going to start calling them) can claim that the effects of global warming aren’t already hitting us is if they can prove that climate
Texas and other parts of the U.S. have suffered unprecedented drought this year, destroying incredible portions of this year’s crops. In a distant universe.. er, on the other side of this climatic globe, record floods are pounding Thailand, destroying huge portions of the world’s rice crop. Who could have imagined that the world would be seeing record floods and record droughts at the same time? (Too bad we don’t have any scientists studying the world’s climate and warning us about such things.)
The tropical tourist paradise of Thailand is currently suffering through enormously costly floods, resulting from a “weak” La Niña monsoon season. Following September’s extremely heavy rains — five feet of rain for the month — the monsoon season continues virtually unabated into this month, where it also coincided, last weekend, with the highest tides of the month. It is estimated that 10 % of the nation’s rice crop has been destroyed, so far, costing nearly 4 billion USD, and growing. This will have certain impact on global food prices (driving them higher) and on food security for tens of millions of people.
2011 was a record year for extreme weather, as I’ve noted a few times already. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters of Wunderblog has more on last year’s wild weather, including the top 10 most expensive weather disasters and deadliest weather disasters of 2011, reposted in full from Wunderblog here (note: this is what global warming
The modern world has a problem of overspecialization. The limits of extrapolating generalized truths from what can be observed in limited contexts and over limited periods of times have become more and more apparent in recent years as the blowback of the industrialized way of life, and its associated ways of thinking and interacting with
The rates of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic Coast are increasing 3 to 4 times faster than they are globally, according to a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey. “Since about 1990, sea-level rise in the 600-mile stretch of coastal zone from Cape Hatteras, N.C. to north of Boston, Mass. —
The economic toll of natural disasters cost the world a record amount in 2011, it was reported this week. The total cost was around $380 billion, according to the United Nations. The costliest disasters were earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand. However, floods in Thailand (the most costly floods in Thailand’s history) and elsewhere, fires,
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both released their final evaluations of global temperatures in 2011 yesterday. They provide two of the longest-standing and most reliable annual evaluations of the climate, using data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and National Climatic Data Center
Thailand has been nailed by catastrophic floods this year. We’ve covered the story several times. Apparently, a lot of Thai activists are upset with the Prime Minister’s handling of these floods and are suing. “Thai climate change activists from the Stop Global Warming Association on Wednesday led 300 flood victims in suing Prime Minister Yingluck
“If a new PC or hard drive is on your holiday wish list, you may be in for a rude surprise: supplies are running low and prices have skyrocketed, all because of an extreme weather event that took place halfway around the world,” Andrew Freedman of Climate Central notes. “One wouldn’t normally think of
We’ve written about Thailand’s flooding a few times now. Over a week ago, Michael wrote that 10% of the country’s rice crop had already been destroyed (and Thailand is the world’s leading rice exporter). The cost to the nation was already about $4 billion. Now, the flood waters are taking over the nation’s largest city and
