This satellite image shows Hurricane Katrina as it moved over Mississippi at 9am on 29 August 2005. Climate change may increase the number and severity of dangerous storms.
Credit: NASA
SYDNEY: Weather-related catastrophes brought about by climate change are increasing, said the top U.N. humanitarian official who warned of the possibility of "mega-disasters".
John Holmes, the U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said one of the biggest challenges facing the aid community was the problems stemming from changing weather patterns.
"When it comes meteorological disasters, weather-related disasters, then there is a trend upwards connected with climate change," said Holmes, who is in Australia for high-level talks on humanitarian aid.
Floods, cyclones and drought
"The trend is there is terms of floods, and cyclones, and droughts."
Holmes, who is the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said it had been a tough year due to January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 250,000 people.
He said while earthquakes, such as the 7.0-magnitude quake which levelled the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, were random, weather-related natural disasters were increasing in number and scale.
Mega-cities spell disaster
"It's partly the very obvious things like the number of cyclones and the intensity of the cyclones, and the amount of flooding," he said. "But is also in slightly more invisible ways – in Africa with drought spreading, desertification spreading."
Holmes said officials were particularly concerned about places where a combination of factors – such as large populations, or likelihood of earthquake, or susceptibility to rising sea levels – made them more vulnerable.
"One of things we worry about is mega cities could produce, at some point, a mega disaster," he said.
Need to focus on reducing impact
"Cities like Kathmandu for example, which sits on two earthquake faults, where a large earthquake will come along ... and the results could be catastrophic."
Holmes said while some countries were well-prepared for disaster – such as Chile which was hit with a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in February which left 520 people dead – others such as Haiti were less able to manage.
"That's one of the reasons we want to focus on not just how we respond to disaster, we need to do that, but how you reduce the impact of those disasters before they happen," Holmes said.
In Haiti, the situation remained serious, he said, with some 1.5 million people living in makeshift shelters and little prospect of this changing soon.
Scaremongering from the safe position of 2010
The author was carried away with the hype and the misinformation disseminated by some who ought to have known better. From our vantage point now, in 2010, we can see that this was scaremongering since we have experienced global cooling since 1998, the Sun has experienced extreme quiet, the 'hockey stick' predicting extraordinary temperature rises has been proven wrong, Al Gore and the IPPC's Dr Pachauri have vested interests in promoting the scam of global warming etc.
Science shows us that the Himalayan glaciers are not retreating across the board, the Amazon rainforests are perfectly normal, there has not been an increase in hurricane activity, and the drought experienced in Australia, whilst long, was quite usual. Few have been prepared to learn from history and to adopt a wider timeline on our glasses.
We should take a lesson from this one typical letter of just a couple of years ago. Will we take our cues from journalists, or from science?
The same opposition letter as usual
Could you please make it clear what you mean by Al Gore and Pachauri's vested interests? Also your scientific explanation on the climate change!!! Sorry, I just want to learn more.