{"id":21885,"date":"2017-09-03T12:10:20","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T11:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21885"},"modified":"2017-09-03T12:10:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T11:10:20","slug":"climate-change-urban-development-massive-flooding-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21885","title":{"rendered":"Climate change + urban development = massive flooding worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;Houston may have broken the US rainfall records, but lost in the dramatic worldwide coverage of Texas has been the plight of tens of millions of people across Asia and Africa who are also counting the human cost of equally intense storms in which months of rain has fallen in just a few hours.<\/p>\n<p>One of the heaviest monsoons recorded in the past 30 years has swamped large parts of India and south-east Asia, affecting millions. Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Pakistan have all been hit and major cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Karachi and Dhaka have been paralysed as roads turn to rivers and waters flood villages.<\/p>\n<p>The scale of the flood disasters in the US and south Asia has shocked governments worldwide and left aid agencies struggling. Around 1,200 people are known to have died so far in Asia, more than 40 million people have been affected and millions of hectares of crops have been destroyed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So what is to blame for these severe weather events and some of the worst flooding ever seen? Climate scientists agree that extreme rainfall will increase as the world warms. Other researchers argue that poor urban infrastructure and the rapid, unchecked sprawl of cities on to marshlands and other places that usually absorb excess rainwater have led to flooding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Flooding is already one of the world\u2019s greatest causes of illness and death. According to the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, between 1985 and 2014 floods worldwide killed more than 500,000 people, displaced over 650 million people and caused damage in excess of $800bn. Between 2003 and 2008 large-scale floods that displaced at least 100,000 people occurred in more than 1,800 cities in 40 countries.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These are extracts from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/sep\/02\/flood-waters-rising-urban-development-climate-change\">an interesting article<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Houston may have broken the US rainfall records, but lost in the dramatic worldwide coverage of Texas has been the plight of tens of millions of people across Asia and Africa who are also counting the human cost of equally intense storms in which months of rain has fallen in just a few hours. One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21889,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885\/revisions\/21889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}