Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Nearly one million people in southern Africa have been affected by floods, cyclones and heavy rains since October 2007. Madagascar has been hardest hit, with almost a third of a million people suffering the consequences of a series of extreme events. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, further heavy rains are still expected, including in central Mozambique, where the rivers are already swollen after two days of intense rainfall last week.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has called for more investment in weather forecasting in Africa, Central Asia and small island states. "We need to make more effort to better observe our planet... Every social [and] economic sector is affected by the weather, by water, by climate issues. To make the right decision it is absolutely essential to have the right information," said WMO head Michel Jarraud.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf, part of the Antarctic ice mass, is collapsing. "We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up," said Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, Colorado, in the United States.

NSIDC reports that, in late February, a large iceberg, 41 by 2.5 kilometres in size, fell away from the southwestern front of the ice shelf, triggering runaway disintegration of 405 square kilometres of the shelf interior. In 1993, David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge predicted that the Wilkins Ice Shelf was vulnerable to global warming. "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened. I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly," he said.

South Asia could face a major crisis if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at the present rate, according to a new report from Greenpeace. The report suggests that the region could face a wave of migrants, with 125 million people displaced if global temperature is allowed to rise by 4-5°C this century. "Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk of them will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated," said author Sudhir Chella Rajan of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

In India, large cities, such as Mumbai and Madras, lie within the low elevation coastal zone and huge investment along the coast line is at risk. "This isn't going to happen gradually. What we are going to see is a series of coastal surges, you will see inundation, salt water intrusion - which will cause lots of harm and devastate a lot of these infrastructures," Rajan warned. Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace commented that "this is yet more evidence of the humanitarian disaster that will unfold if we fail to be guided by the science of climate change and act to reduce our emissions. It is also further confirmation that climate change will hit the poorest nations, where people are most vulnerable, first and hardest."