At the start of last month, torrential rain in the Mediterranean led to severe flooding, infrastructure damage and deaths in multiple countries. As climate change expedites more extreme weather events like this, we need to consider how they are framed. These so-called natural disasters are often construed as “acts of God,” both actuarially and colloquially, but most of time the blame more fairly lies on human actions.
A low pressure system, named Storm Daniel by the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, dumped downpours over 10 days across several nations, including Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and Libya. The rain in Spain fell over just a few hours, yet major flooding still led to five fatalities. Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey had precipitation for four days, submerging Greece’s agricultural center, the Thessalian plain. The storm then strengthened into a medicane, a Mediterranean hurricane, dropping record-high amounts of water on Libya over 24 hours from Sept. 10 to 11. Many areas were reported to have received between 150mm and 240mm of precipitation, with the town of al-Bayda getting 414.1mm. By comparison, in an average year, the coastal city of Derna — the epicenter of Libya’s resulting crisis — gets just 274mm of rain.
Libya’s experience has been especially catastrophic. Rain is one thing, but the collapse of two huge dams is another. At around 3am on Sept. 11, the water broke through the barriers, unleashing a tsunami-size torrent on top of Derna. About 4,000 people are confirmed dead, with more than 8,000 still missing as of Sept. 21.
Illustration: Constance Chou
A rapid attribution study found that climate change played a role in the events. In Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, global warming made the heavy precipitation up to 10 times more likely, with as much as 40 percent more rain. In Libya, scientists found that it was made up to 50 times more likely by fossil-fuel emissions, with as much as 50 percent more rain — though the weather event was still extremely unusual.
Friederike Otto, climatologist and co-founder of the World Weather Attribution initiative, said the rainfall was far outside the realm of anything seen before.
After extreme events, weather attribution studies have become an important contributor to making human-caused global warming part of the conversation. By comparing what exactly happened with models of a world not warmed by greenhouse gas emissions, researchers are able to calculate whether and how the climate crisis influenced a specific meteorological situation.
It is also important in order to add human agency. Our collective burning of fossil fuels is intensifying and increasing the frequency of storms and droughts, heat waves and wildfires. That is not all. As Otto likes to make clear, disasters happen when hazards collide with vulnerability.
Libya is the perfect example. Reeling from years of civil war, corruption and neglect, the country was already fragile. Split between two governments, the critical maintenance on the destroyed dams simply did not happen despite repeated warnings from experts. The structures, designed to protect against flash flooding, were damaged in a storm in 1986. More than a decade later, a study commissioned by the Libyan government revealed cracks and fissures in their structures. In 2021, a report said the dams had not been maintained despite the allocation of more than US$2 million in 2012 and 2013. There will now be an investigation to find out where the money went.
For years, discussion around how to adapt to a rapidly changing climate was hindered by many who argued that it would reduce pressure to cut emissions. That attitude has arguably lingered in news reporting of some events and risks letting governments get away with not doing enough to protect their citizens.
A prolonged food shortage in Madagascar, for example, was roundly portrayed in the media as the world’s first climate-driven famine, resulting from years of drought. Those stories missed the core problem, though: bad governance and greed. Corporate land grabs have taken up much of the agricultural terrain while communities slip further into poverty. Indeed, an attribution study found that climate change was not a significant driver of the food insecurity in Madagascar at all.
Elsewhere, land-management decisions have transformed absorbent wetlands into slick concrete — a factor behind the 2021 floods in Germany — and societal structures have made certain groups more exposed, such as in India, where caste-based discrimination prevented some from entering evacuation shelters during cyclones.
Making these vulnerabilities part of the dialogue is the first step to taking effective action. Yet it does not help that adaptation funding globally is still a fraction of the money that goes to emissions reduction. That is becoming a more critical issue: Although deaths from natural disasters have been decreasing on the whole as disaster management has improved, climate change is making it much harder by spurring events well outside of previous experiences. Some measures may be expensive, but any costs involved will pale in comparison to doing nothing.
It is hard to say whether proper maintenance would have completely prevented the dam bursts in Libya in the face of such an intense event. Yet it is clear that human activity intensified both the threat and weaknesses, so much so that the people of Derna stood no chance.
So next time there is a natural disaster, do not forget: We are making things so much worse for ourselves on the ground, too.
Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017