‘Blowouts’ from glacier melt in Pakistan have tripled this year and exacerbate flooding

This year alone, the country’s chief meteorologist warned, Pakistan experienced three times the usual amount of lake glacier eruptions – a sudden release of water from a lake fed by melting ice – that can cause catastrophic floods.

It is not yet clear how the current flood crisis in Pakistan is related to the thaw. But unless global warming emissions are curbed, Sarfraz suggests the country’s glaciers will continue to melt rapidly.

“Global warming will not stop until we reduce greenhouse gases and if global warming does not stop, these climate change effects will only increase,” he said.

That vulnerability has been visible for months, with record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in the country’s northern mountains leading to floods that have killed at least 1,191 people – including 399 children – since mid-June.

Fears of new floods

Southern Pakistan on Thursday braced for more flooding as the Indus River rushes into the river, exacerbating the devastation in a country already engulfed by a third of the disaster caused by climate change.

The United Nations has appealed for $160 million to help in what it called an “unprecedented climate catastrophe”.

“We are on high alert as water flowing from the northern floods is expected to enter the province over the next few days,” Sindh provincial government spokesman Murtaza Wahab told Reuters.

A flow of about 600,000 cubic feet per second is expected to amplify the Indus, testing its flood defenses, Wahab said.

Pakistan received nearly 190% more rain than the 30-year average in the June-August quarter, totaling 390.7 mm (15.38 in).

Sindh, with a population of 50 million, has been hardest hit, with rains increasing 466% compared to the 30-year average.

Some parts of the county look like an inland sea with only occasional patches of trees or elevated roads fracturing the surface of murky floodwaters.

Hundreds of families have taken refuge on the roads, the only dry land looming for many of them.

Villagers rushed to meet a Reuters news team passing by on a road near Dadu on Thursday, begging for food or other help.

The floods washed away homes, businesses, infrastructure and roads. Existing and stored crops were destroyed and nearly two million acres (809,371 hectares) of agricultural land were inundated.

The government says 33 million people, or 15% of the 220 million people, have been affected.

The National Disaster Management Authority said some 480,030 people have been displaced and are being cared for in the camps, but even those who were not forced to leave their homes are in danger.

The United Nations Children’s Agency warned that “more than three million children are in need of humanitarian assistance and are at increased risk of water-borne diseases, drowning and malnutrition due to the most severe floods in Pakistan’s modern history.”

The World Health Organization said more than 6.4 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

Aid began arriving on planes loaded with food, tents and medicine, mostly from China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Aid agencies have asked the government to allow food imports from neighboring India, across a largely closed border that has for decades been the frontline between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

The government has not indicated its willingness to open the border to Indian food imports.