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Heavy
rains, flooding and a spike in new arrivals could threaten the lives of
over 110,000 Burundian refugees in overcrowded camps in Tanzania, six aid agencies said on Monday, amid warnings of rising political tension in Burundi.
Life-threatening
malaria and diarrhoea have been spreading in Nyarugusu, the world’s
third largest refugee camp, since the rainy season began, and damage
caused by a powerful El Nino has left aid agencies short of funds
throughout east Africa.
“Refugees
are arriving in the hundreds every day,” the agencies, which include
Oxfam, Save the Children and HelpAge International, said in a statement.
“Many
people are still living in overcrowded mass shelters months after their
arrival, where wet floors and cramped conditions mean that the risk of
respiratory infections and waterborne diseases is high.”
The agencies also fear a fresh outbreak of cholera, which killed 33 Burundian refugees in western Tanzania in May, as heavy rain sometimes makes toilets overflow and flood shelters.
The
new Old World Drought Atlas of droughts and wet weather in the Old
World gives climate scientists greater perspective on current weather
phenomenon.
Climate
scientists have produced an atlas reconstructing weather conditions
over the last millennium, in an effort to understand more about current
changes to the weather.
They hope their Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) will allow for a greater understanding of climate forecasts.
"Climate
model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin
and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a
consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate," write the scientists
in their paper, published in Science Advances on Friday.
The
researchers used archaeological tree ring data to measure more than a
thousand years of European weather. They compared their findings
to historical accounts of severe droughts, wet weather events or other
catastrophes, and found that the tree ring data corresponds with many
documented incidents of extreme weather.
Oh,
and look at 1741, and the terrible drought. The trees are showing the
results of the cold and dry spell that began in 1739. This is the year
of the great Irish famine, and it killed millions as well. Here’s what
the paper has to say about the 1741 map:
The Irish famine of
1740–1741: This event has been attributed to unusually low winter and
spring temperatures in 1740, resulting in crop failures and subsequent
famine (17).
The OWDA is not well suited for determining temperature anomalies
because it primarily reflects warm season
hydroclimate. However, climate
field reconstructions of seasonal precipitation from documentary and
early instrumental data (18)
indicate that spring-summer rainfall over Ireland in 1741 was well
below normal relative to the modern average. Drought over Ireland may
therefore have contributed to the severity of the famine through its
negative impact on food production in 1741. The OWDA map of 1741
indicates severe drought over Ireland that also extended over England
and Wales, consistent with previously reported record rainfall deficits.
Is
it just me, or does this give you the willies? It’s like looking at
that big high pressure over the NW Atlantic on the night of April
14,1912. The Titanic survivors reported the ocean as still as a
mill-pond, and I have the surface weather map that proves they were
right. That’s how I feel about these rainfall charts. That horrible
famine was seven long centuries ago, but the trees still remember, and
they tell us that those old faded pieces of parchment were not
exaggerating. It was real, and it left millions dead, and millions more
in grief.
This Old World Drought Atlas will have great
benefits in climate research, and historians will find them invaluable
as well, but they also give us a warning. Our limited 100 years or so of
written weather records can be deceiving. We think we know what a bad
crop year is, and how long a bad drought can last, but our lifetimes are
rather short, and perhaps we are fools. Knowing this makes fooling with
our planet’s temperature control even more egregious.
The paper is open access and you can read it all HERE.
PUBLISHED:
09:58 EST, 20 June 2013
|
UPDATED:
10:04 EST, 20 June 2013
The Philippines financial capital has banned disposable plastic shopping bags and Styrofoam food containers from today. The move comes as part of escalating efforts across the nation's capital to curb rubbish blamed for deadly flooding. Just
hours after the ban was introduced, members of Makati City's Plastic
Monitoring Task Force were out on the streets looking for vendors that
were ignoring the new rules.
A 25ft-high tidal wave of rubbish: The
Philippines financial capital banned disposable plastic shopping bags
and styrofoam food containers as part of escalating efforts across the
nation's capital to curb rubbish that exacerbates deadly flooding
Cause: Men play basketball near the dump site -
the project officer of Makati's environmental services department, said
cutting down on plastic was vital to stop the clogging of the city's
waterways, which is widely blamed for contributing to floods
Food wrapped in plastic is still
available, but Makati, one of 17 cities or districts that make up Metro
Manila, has gone ahead with banning plastic bags. Prexy
Macana, project officer of Makati's environmental services department,
told AFP that scaling back the use of plastic bags was essential to halt
the clogging of the city's waterways, which is widely blamed for
contributing to floods.
'During our bi-monthly wastewater clean-ups, we found most of the garbage is plastics,' she said.
Flooding
is common in Manlia - last August the Philippine capital was brought to
a near standstill by flooding after almost 24 hours of continuous rain -
it left nine dead and scores homeless.
The previous year flash floods in the Philippines left a death toll of 1000.
Nature ruined: Fishermen sit on a rubbish-filled
riverbank at a dump site in Manila. Consumers are now being given the
option of paper alternatives or not using a bag at all
Making a living: A man arranges used plastic bottles on a truck to be sold at a shop in Manila
