29 December 2015 – Extreme tornadoes in the United States over
Christmas, abnormal snowfalls in Mexico, and heavy flooding in South
America and the United Kingdom show that governments must take more
preventive action to reduce human and economic losses from
weather-related disasters, a senior United Nations official warned
today.
“Prevention measures including upgrading early warning systems to deal
with the new climate variability, revising building codes to ensure more
resilience of critical infrastructure such as schools, hospital and
roads, and more investment in flood defences are critical to protect
more people against disaster impacts,” said Margareta Wahlström, head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
“We have no time to lose as weather-related disasters continue to increase, affecting millions of people.”
Over the weekend, tornadoes and storms killed more than 20 people in the
US states of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois, and
flattened hundreds of buildings and houses.
“More people are at risk due to increased urbanization,” Ms. Wahlström
said. “Reducing spatial density of single family housing and increasing
the resilience of houses against heavier wind load can reduce tornado
impacts.”
Meanwhile, the intense floods in South America are considered the worst
in the past 10 years, forcing more than 170,000 people to evacuate in
Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
“The abnormal flooding is consistent with the prediction made by the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) last November. We cannot ignore
science. Their findings need to be better included in long-term
policies,” Ms. Wahlström added.
Last month, WMO warned that the majority of international climate
outlook models indicated that the 2015-16 El Niño weather phenomenon was
set to strengthen before the end of the year, causing more flooding and
more droughts, setting it among the three strongest since 1950.
The phenomenon, characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean, is also
triggering a rise in drought in different parts of the Americas,
sparking the worst droughts in decades in Central America and Haiti, and
that they will continue into 2016.
In Mexico, snowfall over the weekend blanketed 32 towns in the state of
Chihuahua, with some places hit by accumulations of 30 centimetres and
temperatures of -18 degrees Celsius.
Further afield, December has seen communities in Cumbria, Lancashire,
Greater Manchester and Yorkshire in the UK swamped by rising waters with
damages that could exceed £1.5 billion according to financial analysts.
“The repetitive floods in the UK and unusual snowstorms in Mexico are
alerting the world about how difficult it is to predict global warming
impacts and climate change,” Ms. Wahlström said. UN
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