Watchman Newsletter

Signs of the Times: Natural Disasters Prevalent in 2011

CBN News (Link) - Dale Hurd (September 2, 2011)

The year 2011 began with a flood in Australia so vast it turned an area almost twice as large as Texas into a disaster zone.

The first half of 2011 saw thousands of lives lost to natural disasters and made it the most expensive on record in terms of property damage.

In January, earthquakes hit Argentina, Chile, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Tonga. In February, they hit Burma, the Pacific Islands and the big one, in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The quake struck at midday. Buildings were toppled. Scores were buried under rubble and 181 died. Survivors who crawled from collapsed office buildings were stunned.

One woman who appeared dazed, said of her office building, “It just came down. Like, right down.”

Quake rocks Washington area, felt on East Coast

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP - Bob Lewis (August 23, 2011)

The most powerful earthquake to strike the East Coast in 67 years shook buildings and rattled nerves from South Carolina to Maine on Tuesday. Frightened office workers spilled into the streets in New York, and parts of the White House, Capitol and Pentagon were evacuated.

There were no immediate reports of deaths, but fire officials in Washington said there were at least some injuries.

The National Cathedral said its central tower and three of its four corner spires were damaged, but the White House said advisers had told President Barack Obama there were no reports of major damage to the nation’s infrastructure, including airports and nuclear facilities.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered magnitude 5.8 and was centered 40 miles northwest of Richmond, VA.

Uproar as BBC Muzzles Climate Change Sceptics

Express UK (Link) - Nathan Rao (July 21, 2011)

The BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion.

In a report by its governing body, the BBC Trust, the corporation was urged to focus less on opponents of the “majority consensus” in its programmes.

It said coverage should not be tailored to represent a “false balance” of opinion if one side came from a minority group.

The report was partly based on an independent review of coverage by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London.

Although he found no evidence of bias in BBC output, he suggested where there is a “scientific consensus” it should not hunt out opponents purely to balance the story.

Drought Spreads Pain From Florida to Arizona

The New York Times (Link) - Kim Severson & Kirk Johnson (July 11, 2011)

The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement.

Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days.

“It’s horrible so far,” said Mike Newberry, a Georgia farmer who is trying grow cotton, corn and peanuts on a thousand acres. “There is no description for what we’ve been through since we started planting corn in March.”

The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply cannot feed them.

Alarming Number of Disasters Striking World “Food Baskets”

Millennium-Ark (Link) - Holly Deyo (May 16, 2011)

Dear Friends and Readers of Millennium-Ark,

For the last 5 years, we have posted countless articles covering both natural disasters and their impact on our food supplies as well as on many other timely topics. After several decades of monitoring these events, it’s hard to convey how shocked we are by the sheer number of disasters that have occurred just in the first 4 months of 2011.

Yesterday, all day, I spent analyzing natural disasters and plotted them against our food belts. Never, ever, have I seen so many federally declared disasters this early in the year.

The DHS/FEMA maps were defined by 2 colors: blue signified no disasters (to distinguish the disaster-free areas from water, they are shown in white below) and yellow indicated declared disasters. Map after map, state after state were mostly yellow. Surely this must be an error? Thinking through the numerous news items on Earth Changes, with sinking feeling, I knew they were correct. It was only when the state information was transferred to a single national map, the implications become uncomfortably clear.

Notice how many disasters have occurred in food-producing areas. They are striking the heart of our food growing regions. Many food crops have been wiped out by drought, flood, hail and freezes. These food destroyers are occurring in greater frequency and having larger impact. America’s food belts are taking mighty hits. Some growing areas will not recover this entire year.

4.2 magnitude quake hits north-central Arkansas

News 9 (Link) - AP (April 8, 2011)

A magnitude 4.2 earthquake has been recorded in north-central Arkansas - the largest quake in the region since two natural gas companies agreed to close nearby injection wells last month.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake at 9:56 a.m. Wednesday about three miles northeast of Greenbrier. It's 1 of 10 quakes the U.S.G.S has recorded in the region since a 3.9 magnitude quake recorded at 6:11 p.m. Wednesday.

Greenbrier police dispatcher Steve Priddy said there are no reports of damage or injuries.

Seven tremors of 3.0 magnitude or greater have struck the region since the closure of the injection wells by Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy and Clarion operating. †

Police: Japan disaster death toll to top 18,000

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP (March 20, 2011)

Police officials estimate that the toll from Japan’s massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami will exceed 18,000 deaths.

One of the of the hardest-hit prefectures, Miyagi, estimates that the deaths will top 15,000 in that region alone, police spokesman Hitoshi Sugawara said. Police in other devastated areas declined to estimate eventual tolls, but said the confirmed deaths in their areas already number nearly 3,400.

The National Police Agency said the overall number of bodies collected so far stood at 8,649, while 13,262 people have been listed as missing. It is possible those two lists have overlap, and that some unidentified bodies in the tally of deaths may match names on the missing list once their identities are confirmed.

An eventual death toll also is complicated by the fact that the tsunami likely swept many bodies out to sea, as it did in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when many of the dead were never found. Also, some missing people may have been out of the region at the time of the disasters but did not yet contact relatives or authorities.

In addition to Miyagi’s estimate of more than 15,000 dead, police confirmed nearly 3,400 deaths in Iwate, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Aomori and Chiba provinces, as well as seven dead in Tokyo. †

Japan earthquake magnitude increased to 9.0 from 8.9: USGS

National Post (Link) - Reuters (March 14, 2011)

The U.S. Geological Survey Monday raised the magnitude of the deadly earthquake that struck offshore northern Japan Friday to 9.0 from 8.9.

Independently, Japanese authorities had also updated their estimate of the quake to 9.0, the USGS said on its website.

“This magnitude places the earthquake as the fourth largest in the world since 1900 and the largest in Japan since modern instrumental recordings began 130 years ago,” it said in a message posted at 5:35 p.m.

The agency said revisions of magnitude were common after earthquakes and happened as more data became available and more analysis was performed.

Officials say at least 10,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami that followed it. †

Japan volcano resumes eruption amid earthquake and tsunami aftermath

Oregon Live (Link) - AP (March 13, 2011)

The weather agency in Tokyo says a volcano in southern Japan is spewing ash and rock again as the country struggles with the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in the north.

The Meteorological Agency issued a warning Sunday saying that Shinmoedake volcano resumed activity after a couple of quiet weeks.

The mountain is on Kyushu island, 950 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the epicenter of Friday’s magnitude 8.9 earthquake and resulting tsunami, which devastated much of the country’s northeastern coast.

It was unclear if the eruptions were linked to quake. Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” -- an arc of seismically active zones where earthquake and volcanic eruptions are common. †

Japanese Government Confirms Meltdown

Stratfor Global Intelligence (Link) (March 12, 2011)

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”

NISA’s statement is significant because it is the government agency that reports to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. NISA works in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. Its role is to provide oversight to the industry and is responsible for signing off construction of new plants, among other things. It has been criticized for approving nuclear plants on geological fault lines and for an alleged conflict of interest in regulating the nuclear sector. It was NISA that issued the order for the opening of the valve to release pressure — and thus allegedly some radiation — from the Fukushima power plant.

Quake moved Japan by 8 feet: USGS

Google News (Link) - AFP (March 12, 2011)

Japan’s recent massive earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, appears to have moved the island by about eight feet (2.4 meters), the US Geological Survey said.

“That’s a reasonable number,” USGS seismologist Paul Earle told AFP. “Eight feet, that’s certainly going to be in the ballpark.”

Friday’s 8.9 magnitude quake unleashed a terrifying tsunami that engulfed towns and cities on Japan’s northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan said was an “unprecedented national disaster.”

The quake and its tectonic shift resulted from “thrust faulting” along the boundary of the Pacific and North America plates, according to the USGS.

The Pacific plate pushes under a far western wedge of the North America plate at the rate of about 3.3 inches (83 millimeters) per year, but a colossal earthquake can provide enough of a jolt to dramatically move the plates, with catastrophic consequences.

Earthquake Shakes Up Suez Canal as Iran Warships Approach

Israel National News (Link) - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (February 21, 2011)

An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale shook up residents at the entrance to the Suez Canal early Monday morning, 48 hours before two Iranian ships, a frigate and a supply vessel, are expected to enter the canal.

The National Institute for Astronomical and Geophysical Research reported that tremors from the 3 a.m. quake lasted for 27 minutes, but caused no damage.

The ships had originally been expected to enter the Suez today (Monday), but Egyptian officials announced the delay this morning, without explanation.

Iran inexplicably announced Sunday morning that two of its warships had crossed the Suez, a report that was thoroughly denied by Egyptian authorities. Iranian media did not mention the ships on Monday, and the false report may have been for local consumption.

No Iranian ship has been allowed to pass through the Suez Canal since Iran’s 1979 overthrow of the Shah and Egypt’s signing of a peace treaty with Israel the same year.

Friday Flotsam: Webcams, busy Central America, Iceland fights back and more!

Big Think (Link) - Erik Klemetti: Eruptions (February 11, 2011)

Where did the week go? Some news!

Webcams: Eruptions readers have been keeping an eye on a lot of volcanoes lately - and it sounds like it has paid off. A few of the webcams where activity was spotted were Kirishima (see below) and Sakurajima along with lava lake in the Halema`uma`u Crater. Speaking of Kirishima, the Japanese volcano is still impressing us with ash plumes from this new explosive period, although there is some worry that people are getting complacent about this still potentially dangerous eruption. Keep your eyes peeled because you never know what might be around the corner at some of these volcanoes. Remember, you can find most of the volcano webcams on the planet here. And if the webcams get boring, try watching a pile of volcanic eruption videos, be sure to check out this site suggested by Eruptions readers.

Strong quake jolts Chile; magnitude 6.8

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP - Eva Vergara (February 11, 2011)

A magnitude-6.8 earthquake struck central Chile Friday, centered in almost exactly the same spot where last year’s magnitude-8.8 quake spawned a tsunami and devastated coastal communities.

Electricity and phone service were disrupted and thousands of people fled to higher ground following Friday’s quake, but the government quickly announced that there was no risk of a tsunami, and there were no reports of damage or injuries.

In the following hours, a dozen aftershocks ranging from magnitude-3.9 to magnitude-6.3 shook the seismically active area.

President Sebastian Pinera appealed for calm and praised his government and Chileans in general for responding quickly.

“Today we’re better prepared,” Pinera said. “I think we’ve learned the lesson of Feb. 27, 2010.”

Russian volcano activity causes global concern

Balkans.com (Link) - BNE (February 7, 2011)

Now the world has something else to grip about when it comes to Russia - the weather.

A string of volcanoes on Russia’s eastern seaboard of Kamchatka have been unusually active for the last six months. The dust they threw up diverted winds in the Arctic, pushing cold air over Europe and North America and causing the unusually cold winter this year, say scientists.

The volcanoes (160 in total, of which 29 are active) are still on the go and could create more problems this year, depressing harvests around the world just as global food prices soar and culminating in a second freezing winter next Christmas.

The eruptions have come at the worst possible time. The Pacific Ocean has already been cooled by the so-called La Nina - which contributed to the deluge in Australia and Tropical Cyclones - while at the same time the Atlantic Ocean is warmer than usual, say climatologists. Erste Bank says the combination of this means the weather forecast for the first quarter of this year is extreme, which will hit both the agricultural and mining sectors, sending already spiking prices up even faster. “These climatic conditions reduce the outlooks of harvest for agricultural commodities (last year was also bad) and prevent the mining of commodities like coal,” says Erste. “The extreme weather will probably culminate in the [first quarter] - this is the reason why the prices of commodities will be influenced by this weather... then an acceleration of consumer inflation... There are also problems for transport due to strong storms.”

Cold snap chills northern Mexico

BBC News (Link) (February 4, 2011)

Freezing weather and snow have paralysed much of northern Mexico, which is experiencing its lowest temperatures in more than 50 years.

Thousands of homes have been left without electricity and water, and schools and factories have been closed.

At least six people are reported to have died from the cold.

Among the worst-hit cities has been Ciudad Juarez, which is already suffering the worst violence in Mexico’s drugs war.

Temperatures in the border city have dropped as low as -18C (0F).

Lightning and fire: Japan on alert after volcano’s biggest eruption in 50 years

Daily Mail UK (Link) (January 27, 2011) See photos at link

A one-mile cordon has been established around a volcano on Mount Kirishima after it erupted scattering rocks and ash across southern Japan and sending smoke billowing 5,000ft into the air.

The Meteorological Agency raised the volcanic alert to level 3 as ash today continued to spew from Shinmoedake on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu, and residents have been banned from going within a mile of the volcano following its worst eruption in 50 years.

Agency volcanologist Sei Iijima said the eruption did not pose a threat to nearby cities, and a major eruption was not imminent. But he added: ‘You can never say never with a volcano, although the lack of magma movement beneath the surface leads us to believe that this activity won’t lead to a large-scale eruption,’ he told ABC News.

Crop warning over China drought

BBC News (Link) (January 24, 2011)

A prolonged dry spell in parts of northern, central and eastern China is threatening both crops and water supplies, Chinese state media says.

Shandong province is experiencing its driest weather for 60 years.

Half the wheat-growing land there is affected, while almost a quarter of a million people face drinking water shortages, the China Daily said.

Beijing has also been experiencing its longest dry spell for more than 30 years, another state daily said.

The Chinese capital has had no significant rainfall for three months, the Beijing Times reported.

Analysts say this drought is likely to put further pressure on food prices, which have been rising sharply for months.

Brazil flood deaths top 800 with 400 still missing

BBC (Link) (January 23, 2011)

Officials in Brazil say more than 800 people are now known to have died in floods and landslides in the south-east of the country this month.

More than 400 people are still missing after torrential rain caused whole hillsides to collapse.

The Brazilian government has said it will set up an early warning system to alert communities of impending danger.

The flooding is considered the worst natural disaster Brazil has ever experienced.

According to figures compiled by the newspaper O Globo, about third of all victims were children and adolescents.

Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

National Geographic News (Link) - Brian Handwerk (January 19, 2011)

Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano just took a deep “breath,” causing miles of ground to rise dramatically, scientists report.

The simmering volcano has produced major eruptions—each a thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helens’s 1980 eruption—three times in the past 2.1 million years. Yellowstone’s caldera, which covers a 25- by 37-mile (40- by 60-kilometer) swath of Wyoming, is an ancient crater formed after the last big blast, some 640,000 years ago.

(See “When Yellowstone Explodes” in National Geographic magazine.)

Since then, about 30 smaller eruptions—including one as recent as 70,000 years ago—have filled the caldera with lava and ash, producing the relatively flat landscape we see today.

But beginning in 2004, scientists saw the ground above the caldera rise upward at rates as high as 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) a year. (Related: “Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen ‘Supervolcano.’”)

The rate slowed between 2007 and 2010 to a centimeter a year or less. Still, since the start of the swelling, ground levels over the volcano have been raised by as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) in places.

Next shock will be high food prices

The Sydney Morning Herald (Link) - Paul Sheehan (January 17, 2011)

You will pay for all this water. Unless you are insulated from the normal costs of living, you can expect sticker shock at some point this year, or next, when paying for the weekly food shopping. We’ve had oil shocks. Prepare for food shocks.

Ten years ago, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s composite world food price index stood at 92. For the month of December it was 215.

The most expensive year on record was 2008, when 60 million people slid into poverty because of higher food costs. There were food riots. Over the past three months, the trend in the FAO’s food price index was worse than 2008.

Solar Max Could Spell Trouble

Discovery News (Link) - AFP (December 29, 2010)

2011 is going to be a key solar weather year as the sun starts to become more active.

The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

Many people may be surprised to learn that the sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behavior.

The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

Now, though, there are more and more signs that the sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards “Solar Max,” or the cycle’s climax, say experts.

“The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle,” said Joe Kunches of NASA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

2010’s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards

My Way (Link) - Seth Borenstein & Julie Reed Bell (December 19, 2010)

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 - the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

“It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves,” said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

“The term ‘100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year.”

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.

Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

U.N. Official Admits: We Redistribute World’s Wealth by Climate Policy

The Blaze (Link) - Meredith Jessup (November 18, 2010)

“This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy.”

Is this quote from a) a climate change skeptic, or b) an official from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Climate change skeptics have long theorized about ulterior motives behind attempts to legislate and regulate man-made global warming. This speculation reached a fever pitch after data from the University of East Anglia — widely referenced by the United Nations — was found to be flawed and private emails pointed to a broader conspiracy to falsify the so-called evidence.

But this speculation is only likely to grow after a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Via the Media Research Center, Germany’s NZZ Online Sunday interviews Ottmar Edenhofer of the U.N. (emphases mine):

Der Spiegel: Geologists Warning Of “Mega-Eruption”

No Tricks Zone (Link) - P Gosselin (November 5, 2010)

Der Spiegel reports on the growling-ever-louder Indonesian Merapi volcano in an article titled: Geologists Warning of Mega-Eruption of Merapi. Hat-tip to reader Ike.

The Merapi eruptions are becoming more violent – and the big bang could be just ahead. The Indonesian volcano has been spewing 800°C ash clouds for days.

Global food crisis forecast as prices reach record highs

Guardian UK (Link) - John Vidal (October 25, 2010)

Rising food prices and shortages could cause instability in many countries as the cost of staple foods and vegetables reached their highest levels in two years, with scientists predicting further widespread droughts and floods.

Although food stocks are generally good despite much of this year’s harvests being wiped out in Pakistan and Russia, sugar and rice remain at a record price.

Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5.5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.

“The situation has deteriorated since September,” said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. “In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008.

“We may not get to the prices of 2008 but this time they could stay high much longer.”

Magnitude-6.7 earthquake hits northern Mexico

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP (October 21, 2010)

A powerful earthquake struck offshore in Mexico’s Gulf of California on Thursday, causing people to flee into the streets in the western state of Sinaloa, but there were no reports of damage or injury.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported the magnitude of the quake as 6.9, but later in the day revised it to 6.7. It hit at 11:53 a.m. (1:53 p.m. EDT, 1753 GMT).

The tremor struck about 72 miles (116 kilometers) south of Los Mochis, a city just inland from the coast in Sinaloa. It was centered at a relatively shallow depth of 5.6 miles (9 kilometers).

Sinaloa civil protections authorities said there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Backlash: Graphic Climate Ad Under Fire

The Blaze (Link) - Meredith Jessup (October 4, 2010)

Environmental activists are working to distance themselves from a violent advocacy video that hit the Internet last week depicting the gruesome murder of climate change skeptics.  The four-minute video was produced by a London-based group called 10:10 and was removed almost immediately after it debuted.  However, bloggers and news media have replayed the video, sparking critical backlash around the world.  Though 10:10 claims the film was intended to be comedic, the response has been anything but funny.

“With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh,” the group wrote on its website.  ”Many found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t, and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended,” the group said. “Oh well, we live and learn.”

But what exactly has been learned?  This most recent case of environmental extremism is similar to an “anonymous” article posted last year on a popular left-leaning political site.  A June 2, 2009, article posted to Talking Points Memo was similarly scrapped after objections to its message: “At what point to do we jail or execute global warming deniers?”

White House solves the problem of global warming overnight... by officially changing the phrase to ‘global climate disruption’

Daily Mail (Link) - Carol Driver (September 17, 2010)

Global warming could be a thing of the past, thanks to the Barack Obama administration.

No, the White House has not single-handedly managed to stop the apparent rising temperature – but it does think the terminology oversimplifies the problem.

According to U.S. science adviser John Holdren, the public should start using the phrase ‘global climate disruption’ because it makes the situation sound more dangerous.

During a speech in Oslo, Norway, Mr Holdren said global warming is a ‘dangerous misnomer’ and is not an accurate description of the issues facing the planet.

It comes as Congress prepares to adjourn for the season without completing work on the stalled climate bill, which, after facing a barrage of obstacles, was declared effectively dead in the Senate in July.

Erratic global weather threatens food security

Google News (Link) - AFP - Nina Larson (September 7, 2010)

The drought in Russia and floods in Pakistan are part of a global trend of unpredictable weather patterns and rainfall that threaten food security, experts gathered in Stockholm said.

“We are getting to a point where we are getting more water, more rainy days, but it’s more variable, so it leads to droughts and it leads to floods,” Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment in India, told AFP on the sidelines of the World Water Week conference.

“That is leading to huge amounts of stress on agriculture and livelihoods,” she said, adding that “climate change is making rainfall even more variable.”

Narain was one of around 2,500 experts from 130 countries gathered in Stockholm for the 20th edition of the World Water Week, which opened Sunday and is set to run until Saturday.

Her comments came as eight million people in Pakistan remain dependent on handouts for their survival after monsoons caused devastating floods throughout the country.