Rains sinking the homes and the economy

Atchara and Carolina

At the end of last year, Thailand experienced the country’s heaviest flooding in 50 years. The flood claimed 800 lives and paralysed Thailand for long weeks.

Atchara Suriya works in a tourism agency in Bangkok. We had the chance to meet her at the end of May and, in the middle of a conversation, we started to talk about the floods of 2011. This is what she told us. 

Heavy monsoon rainfalls 

“I am originally from the town of Pathum Thani, north of the capital Bangkok. My region has been one of the most affected by the floods. These last months have been very special for us”. Atchara explains: “The floods resulted from strong rainfalls. Depending on the place, the water went up slowly or very suddenly. At one of my friend’s, it took less than 12 hours for the water to go up to 1 meter.”

“I got only 50 cm in my home. My family and I did not leave. My parents did not want to because of the belongings and because of… our two dogs! So, like lots of others, we decided to stay, and spent our time on the 2^nd floor or on the roof of the house. I remember that preventing the water to come from the outside was useless since the toilets or the drainage would overflow. The old people would not stop saying : this never happened before, this never happened before!”

   Pathum Thani is some kilometres 

far from Bangkok. The ancient capital Ayutthaya is a little bit further North.

 The whole region on this map particularly suffered from the floods. It is here that lots of automotive and electronics plants operate.

“Of course the life in the village changed. Everything stopped. Everything turned to be more expensive. During this exceptional situation we could see lots of positive behaviour. For instance those who had a car would share it with others. People who had never talked to each other would start to do it. The village got organized differently”. About the action from the authorities, Atchara says : “We could see that we had no experience of flood. There was such a lack of organization from both the people and the authorities.”

Crippled tourism and industry 

When we were in the ancient 

capital Ayutthaya, we could 

observe the marks 

left by the water…

“The whole region kind of stopped. Firstly the tourism was impacted. The ancient capital Ayutthaya is close to my town, a little bit north. The historical heritage there was at risk and much less tourists came during the flooding months.

Secondly, the region where I live is an industrial area, there are lots of factories around. The floods stopped the activity for most of them. Lots of small companies basically closed as the losses were too big. In some Japanese companies, the Thai people had to choose between moving to Japan and work there for a certain period… or losing their job. A cousin of mine stopped working for one month. She stayed at home, with no revenue, in 2 meters high waters.”

Atchara concludes : “I hope the authorities will learn from what happened, I hope we can be better organized to face floods. Nature is changing. But nature rules our life so we must pay attention to it. We are responsible for it!” 

An economy hit for a long time 

Climate change includes changes in precipitation around the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declares the following: “Anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe. This is particularly the case in the high latitudes and tropical regions, and in winter in the northern mid-latitudes.”

The 2011 heavy rainfalls and the resulting flood had a huge impact on Thailand’s economy. The country’s growth in 2011 was only 0,1% ; much less compared to 2010 growth of 7,8%.
 
More than 10 000 factories were forced to close and to lay off more than 350 000 workers while production was suspended. Japan economy shrank 2,3% in the fourth quarter 2011 partly due to the flooding that disrupted production at leading manufacturers such as Sony and Honda. The worldwide supply chain of hard disk drives – used in computers – was disrupted and the prices rose up. The manufacturer Western Digital announced recently that the situation will not come back to normal before… 2013.

Honda cars under water - Ayutthaya region

Photo : Getty Images

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In Asia and the Pacific, 42 million people were displaced by environmental disasters between beginning 2010 and beginning 2012 (Asian Development Bank)

U.S. insured losses from weather disasters have soared from an average of about $3 billion a year in the 1980s to about $20 billion a year in the last decade, even after adjusting for inflation (Swiss Re) 

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Winds and chaos

Yesterday, in a kitchen in Washington D.C. :

  - Michele : “My Dear, do you know that last March has been the hottest month of March in the U.S. since 1895 ?! I do not like these heat waves. Can’t the scientists predict them?”

  - Barack : “Oh Dear, climate is complicated, it is very difficult to predict. And concerning the heat waves, unfortunately global warming will mean more of them!…”

Chaos in the air 

For the scientists dealing with climate change, the forecast of the climate in the next decades is a key item. Models build these predictions. They show trends however no one can declare they are perfectly accurate. Why? Because the climate is an extremely complex system and humans have been studying it for only few decades.

We met Christophe in Nouméa 

on the 16^th of April. In the past 

Christophe worked in the 

United States and Ivory Coast.

“The weather here in the Pacific Ocean is even less predictable than in the Atlantic Ocean for instance”, says Christopke Menkes. We met Christophe Menkes in Nouméa, New Caledonia, at the Institute of Research for Development (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, IRD) which is a French governmental organization dedicated to research, outside of metropolitan France. Christophe is an expert in oceanology and focuses especially on cyclones, environmental impacts on tuna, and climate effects on Dengue spreading.

Christophe explains : “When dealing with climate predictions, there is a part of variability that cannot be reduced. The chaos theory explains this : many conditions influence the climate and very slight changes of these conditions can totally modify the consequences.” Maybe you have heard about the butterfly effect? 'A butterfly wing flapping in Japan might be the origin of a cyclone in the United States!'

From winds to cyclones 

Christophe adds : “For instance, about cyclones, specific winds of West Africa are always at the origin of the Atlantic cyclones. It is what we call a forcing input. In South West Pacific, the conditions are more complex and more random”.

The tropical cyclones, between 1945 and 2006 -
The area in South West Pacific where the cyclones are generated extends from the Solomon Islands to Tonga. New Caledonia is located in the middle of this cyclonic region.

“Concerning the cyclonic activity in the South West Pacific region, studies say that global warming will not necessarily mean an increase in numbers of cyclones. Regarding their intensity, only two studies have been published so far and they predict that the cyclones will be more intense in this region. The question should be more investigated to give solid conclusions”, says Christophe.

“Regarding the Central Pacific, things are clearer. The phenomenon El Niño has a direct impact on the generation of cyclones.” The El Niño episodes are defined as warmer than normal sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean. “The more El Niño occurs, the more cyclones will emerge ; and the studies show that climate change is the origin of more and more periods of El Niño.”

Irene, Katrina, Rita… nice names which worry North East America

Concerning the Atlantic, there is observational evidence of an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970. “In some cases natural variability of the climate can result in an extreme event being more intense on a long period. However in the North Atlantic the recent change is a consequence of human activity,” says Christophe.

The cyclone (or hurricane) Katrina of 2005 was one of the most destructive and expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. It claimed 1 800 lives and caused 134 billion dollars in damage (U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2009). We also remember that last year Irene forced New York City to stand still during some days and be partially evacuated. The Big Apple will probably experience these circumstances again in the future.

 

Land lost during 2005 Hurricanes - 

In 2005, in the United States, 560 km² of land and wetlands were lost to open water during hurricanes Rita and Katrina. The photos and maps show the Chandeleur Islands, east of New Orleans, before and after the 2005 hurricanes ; 85 percent of the islands’ above-water land mass was eliminated (U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2009).

At end of March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a special report about extreme events, called Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. The report assesses the evidence that climate change has led to changes in climate extremes – cyclones, droughts, floods, heat waves - and the extent to which policies to avoid these prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of such events. Regarding cyclones, the conclusions are the following : “first, it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged. Second, average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins.”

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Presentation video of the special report by the IPCC. The report can be downloaded here.

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