Pakistan’s monster monsoon

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Pakistan is facing one of the worst floods in its recent history.

Flooding of the Indus River in Pakistan in late July and August 2010 led to a humanitarian disaster which is considered to be one of the worst in Pakistan’s history.
The floods affected approximately 20 million people.
Record monsoon rains began to fall in Pakistan’s mountainous northwest region, causing flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Baluchistan provinces.

The regions of Sindh and Baluchistan, comprising the western half of Pakistan, have been badly hit, although Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa too have been affected.
Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority claimed nearly 33 million people, about 15% of the country’s population, had been affected by the floods.
About 110 of the 150 districts in the country are affected by the flooding.
Pakistan’s meteorological department warned that the Kabul River, is in a very high flood level.

“Kabul River originates in Afghanistan and flows through the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and joins a tributary of the Indus River.”

The current flood is a direct result of an extremely wet monsoon season this year.
The same southwest monsoon that brings the bulk of India’s annual rainfall causes rain in Pakistan as well.
The monsoon season in Pakistan, however, is a little shorter than in India.
That is because the rain-bearing monsoon winds take time to travel northward from India into Pakistan.
The official monsoon season in Pakistan begins on July 1 and extends until September, although most of the rainfall happens during the months of July and August.
The active rainfall season is only one and a half months.
The normal rainfall for Pakistan as a whole during this three-month monsoon season is 140 mm.
Since the season is quite short, there is a wide variation in the monsoon rainfall every year.
Current Season: Pakistan has already received 354.3 mm of rain, more than three times the normal of 113.7 mm.

The rainfall situation in Pakistan has been quite different from that of India so far, though incidents of extreme rainfall and flooding have happened here as well.
In August, India has received rainfall that is barely 6 per cent more than the normal.
For the entire season so far, the country has received 7 per cent more than normal rainfall.
However, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand experienced torrential rainfall, triggering landslides and flash floods.
Since, India is such a huge country, the overall numbers hide marked variations at the regional and local levels.
In August, central India, comprising mainly Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, has received 26% excess rainfall.

It is clear that the climate crisis is supercharging the toll of extreme weather across the globe.
The population of Pakistan is especially at risk from extreme weather driven by the climate emergency.
The country is ranked eighth most at risk in the world by the Global Climate Risk Index.