Warming, other factors worsened Pakistan floods, study finds

Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds.

Pakistan’s overall vulnerability, including people living in harm’s way, is the chief factor in the disaster that at one point submerged one-third of the country under water, but human-caused “climate change also plays a really important role here,” said study senior author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London.

There are many ingredients to the still ongoing humanitarian crisis — some meteorological, some economic, some societal, some historic and construction oriented. Add to that weather records that don’t go back far enough in time.

With such complications and limitations, the team of international scientists looking at the disaster couldn’t quantify how much climate change had increased the likelihood and frequency of the flooding, said authors of the study. It was released Thursday but not yet peer reviewed.