Floods and Droughts: two sides of the same coin
Dr Anjani Ganase considers how Earth’s water cycles are changing, affected by global warming. Currently parts of the world appear to be experiencing a series of severe droughts, while other areas are the suffering from severe floods. Over the last weeks, Pakistan received nearly three times the average monsoonal rain of the past years, wiping away towns and villages resulting in over 1000 deaths and displacing over 33 million people. Meanwhile Sudan has experienced torrential downpours that destroyed 9600 homes and damaged 22,000 more with 79 dead. USA flash flooding in Texas, New Mexico has seen record amounts of rainfall in just 24 hours. Areas at risk of drought as a result of climate change (image courtesy IPCC AR6). At the same time, most of Europe has been under severe drought conditions with water reserves low enough to unbury the past. World War II ships full of explosives dumped by the Nazis in the Danube River have r...