BANGKOK: Southern Thailand engulfed by rising waters. Entire towns cut off by record floods in Vietnam. The Philippines picking up the pieces from consecutive typhoons. Malaysia bracing for a long and heavy wet season.
Over just a few weeks, much of Southeast Asia has been drenched by one of its most punishing wet seasons in recent memory, a chain of floods and storms stretching from the Gulf of Thailand to the Pacific.
Millions of people have been displaced and hundreds killed by compounding extremes, and experts told CNA this is the outcome of a convergence of weather systems and the amplifying effect of climate change.
Two major climate systems – La Niña and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole characterised by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures – have aligned unusually this season, supercharging rainfall across the region, the experts added.
They noted that at the same time, the region’s ability to adapt is being outpaced by the rate of global warming and the altered weather conditions that come with it.
As historic records continue to get broken, they warned that the big wet is likely to linger over already sodden areas, and descend slowly down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore and Indonesia in the weeks to come.
An emergency situation lingers in multiple geographies. Large sections of Central Vietnam have been hit by a seemingly endless deluge of rain that have flooded up to 200,000 homes and killed at least 90 people.
The country has been hit by 14 typhoons this year. And storms have impacted major urban centres and tourism hotspots nationwide, from Hanoi and Hue in the north, to Danang, Hoi An and Nha Trang, and Ho Chi Minh City in the south, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Multiple river basins experienced exceptionally severe floods, with water levels surpassing historical records, including the Huong, Vu Gia–Thu Bon, Ba and Dinh rivers. The city of Hue received record rainfall of 1m to 1.7m in a 24-hour period in late October.
“The simultaneous occurrence of extreme, record-breaking floods across several independent river systems strongly underscores the abnormal nature of this event,” said Pham Thi Thanh Nga, the director-general of the Vietnam Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/floods-typhoon-thailand-hat-yai-vietnam-weather-5490566
