StraitsTimes (by AP, AFP)

Climate change to blame for freak weather?

The freak weather - with a 'once in 100 years' type of flooding - revives concerns that modern civilisation is at fault

WASHINGTON - Deadly floods in Europe and Asia. Drought in America.

The daily drumbeat of severe weather has millions wondering if something strange is happening.

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About 100 people have died as flood waters continue to rage through some of Europe's historic cities while in Asia, the traditional monsoon season has left hundreds dead and millions more without shelter.

The freak weather has revived concerns that modern civilisation is at fault, with some environmental groups and politicians blaming global climate change - a charge still fiercely disputed.

The European floods are 'definitely unusual in the sense that you're seeing once-in-100-year type flooding,' said Mr James Hurrell, a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Mr Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate monitoring at the government's National Climatic Data Centre, however, cautioned not to 'take one particular event or a series of events and attribute what's happening to climate change'.

Looking ahead to the effect of continued change, he said: 'It would not be unexpected to see more instances of extreme weather - more droughts, more flooding.'

The warming of climate over the past 100 years or so can lead to dry conditions and cause more evaporation of water, increasing the amount of moisture in the air for rainstorms - as a result the heavy floods are not a surprise, he added.

So is there a specific cause for last week's European floods?

Mr Hurrell cited the North Atlantic Oscillation, a weather pattern in which high-pressure and low-pressure centres over northern and southern Europe tend to alternate.

Normally in the summer, high pressure dominates southern Europe, bringing mild and warm weather.

In the past few weeks, the centres switched, moving a low pressure to the south and bringing with it stormy weather.

In China, too, unusual and deadly weather is under way with killer floods in normally dry regions.

Chinese government experts say the events are an unusually strong manifestation of global warming.

'Global climate change... has caused these extreme events,' said a special adviser on climate change for the China Meteorological Administration.

'It has caused a lot of extreme conditions and amplified the anomalies.'

The catastrophes come just days before some 50,000 delegates gather in Johannesburg for the UN Earth Summit to consider the effects of development on the environment.

Meanwhile, some politicians have pointed a finger at the United States, whose controversial refusal to adopt the Kyoto protocol on global warming angered many in Europe.

Germany's Overseas Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul linked the devastating floods in Europe and Asia to global climate changes and said they should 'open the eyes of those in the US government' who deny a relationship between pollution and natural disasters. AP, AFP

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002