Tiempo Climate Newswatch

South Asia has been hit by the worst floods in 15 years. Torrential rains have inundated parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. In Bangladesh, over 500 people have been killed and more than 25 million affected. The death toll over South Asia as a whole has reached 1,500.

The severe flooding in Bangladesh resulted from heavy rains over the eastern side of the subcontinent, draining into the rivers that flow through the Ganges Delta. The capital city of Bangladesh, Dhaka, has been particularly hard-hit, with over one million people stranded in low-lying areas. The total cost of the flooding in Bangladesh has been put at US$7 billion. Heavy rains have also affected China and Japan.

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• ENN
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• CNN
• Guardian Unlimited
• Straits Times

Scientists have warned that estimates of the amount of greenhouse gases released through forest destruction in the Amazon may have been seriously underestimated. Previous work failed to take full account of the contribution of rotting vegetation, for example, in areas flooded by hydroelectric schemes.

According to Philip Fearnside, of Brazil's National Institute of Amazon Research, around 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent were released during 2003. This would place Brazil in the world's top five greenhouse contributors. Others disagree. Carlos Nobre, of the National Institute of Space Research, referring to Fearnside's estimate as "unbelievable," puts the figure at 250 million tonnes. The significance of this debate is that the final figure will affect Brazil's position in the carbon trading market and its potential to benefit from CDM schemes.

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• ENN

A recent letter in the British medical journal The Lancet has challenged simplistic views of the link between climate change and the incidence of malaria, calling for greater accuracy in the projections. "Temperature is only one of many, many factors in malaria, and in many cases it's totally irrelevant," according to Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, speaking to CNN. "Many climate scientists don't know anything about the complexities of malaria," he continued.

Alistair Woodward, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, responded that future risks had to be mapped out with imperfect models, but governments couldn't afford to wait till the science was certain before acting. "In terms of malaria and many other (mosquito-borne) diseases... a changed climate will stress health care systems in some parts of the world," he said. 150,000 people die as a result of malaria each year. The disease kills a child every 30 seconds in Africa and accounts for 40 per cent of health budgets in some countries.

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• Letter to The Lancet
• CNN
• World Health Organization