TY - JOUR

T1 - Climate change increased extreme monsoon rainfall, flooding highly vulnerable communities in Pakistan

AU - Otto, Friederike E L

AU - Zachariah, Mariam

AU - Saeed, Fahad

AU - Siddiqi, Ayesha

AU - Kamil, Shahzad

AU - Mushtaq, Haris

AU - T, Arulalan

AU - Achutarao, Krishna

AU - S T, Chaitra

AU - Barnes, Clair

AU - Philip, Sjoukje

AU - Kew, Sarah F

AU - Vautard, Robert

AU - Koren, Gerbrand

AU - Pinto, Izidine

AU - Wolski, Piotr

AU - Vahlberg, Maja

AU - Singh, Roop

AU - Arrighi, Julie

AU - Van Aalst, Maarten

AU - Thalheimer, Lisa

AU - Raju, Emmanuel

AU - Li, Sihan

AU - Yang, Wenchang

AU - Harrington, Luke James

AU - Clarke, Ben

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - As a direct consequence of extreme monsoon rainfall throughout the summer 2022 season Pakistan experienced the worst flooding in its history. We employ a probabilistic event attribution methodology as well as a detailed assessment of the dynamics to understand the role of climate change in this event. Many of the available state-of-the-art climate models struggle to simulate these rainfall characteristics. Those that pass our evaluation test generally show a much smaller change in likelihood and intensity of extreme rainfall than the trend we found in the observations. This discrepancy suggests that long-term variability, or processes that our evaluation may not capture, can play an important role, rendering it infeasible to quantify the overall role of human-induced climate change. However, the majority of models and observations we have analysed show that intense rainfall has become heavier as Pakistan has warmed. Some of these models suggest climate change could have increased the rainfall intensity up to 50%. The devastating impacts were also driven by the proximity of human settlements, infrastructure (homes, buildings, bridges), and agricultural land to flood plains, inadequate infrastructure, limited ex-ante risk reduction capacity, an outdated river management system, underlying vulnerabilities driven by high poverty rates and socioeconomic factors (e.g. gender, age, income, and education), and ongoing political and economic instability. Both current conditions and the potential further increase in extreme peaks in rainfall over Pakistan in light of anthropogenic climate change, highlight the urgent need to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather in Pakistan

AB - As a direct consequence of extreme monsoon rainfall throughout the summer 2022 season Pakistan experienced the worst flooding in its history. We employ a probabilistic event attribution methodology as well as a detailed assessment of the dynamics to understand the role of climate change in this event. Many of the available state-of-the-art climate models struggle to simulate these rainfall characteristics. Those that pass our evaluation test generally show a much smaller change in likelihood and intensity of extreme rainfall than the trend we found in the observations. This discrepancy suggests that long-term variability, or processes that our evaluation may not capture, can play an important role, rendering it infeasible to quantify the overall role of human-induced climate change. However, the majority of models and observations we have analysed show that intense rainfall has become heavier as Pakistan has warmed. Some of these models suggest climate change could have increased the rainfall intensity up to 50%. The devastating impacts were also driven by the proximity of human settlements, infrastructure (homes, buildings, bridges), and agricultural land to flood plains, inadequate infrastructure, limited ex-ante risk reduction capacity, an outdated river management system, underlying vulnerabilities driven by high poverty rates and socioeconomic factors (e.g. gender, age, income, and education), and ongoing political and economic instability. Both current conditions and the potential further increase in extreme peaks in rainfall over Pakistan in light of anthropogenic climate change, highlight the urgent need to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather in Pakistan

U2 - 10.1088/2752-5295/acbfd5

DO - 10.1088/2752-5295/acbfd5

M3 - Journal article

VL - 2

JO - Environmental Research: Climate

JF - Environmental Research: Climate

SN - 2752-5295

M1 - 025001

ER -