Chicago – July 19, 2024
From Afghanistan to Bangladesh, India to Nepal, flash flooding and torrential rain have killed hundreds of people in recent weeks, as the climate crisis amplifies the effects of the monsoon season, bringing widespread devastation to South Asia.
Millions of people have been displaced by floods, landslides and heavy rains in recent weeks across the region, which is home to about a quarter of the world’s population and among the most vulnerable to the impacts of the human-caused climate crisis.
Flooding from annual monsoon rains is common in South Asia but the climate crisis has turbocharged extreme weather events across the region, scientists say, with prolonged and intense heat waves giving way to record rainfall and storms.
At least 40 people were killed and 347 injured in flooding from heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan, the health ministry said on Tuesday. In India, 97 people have died in flooding in northeast Assam state since May, official figures showed. Large-scale floods in northeast Bangladesh have impacted more than 2 million people. And flash floods and landslides in Nepal have killed dozens, according to the NGO Nepal Centre for Disaster Management (NCDM).
