Venice is flooded, but other cities are in much greater danger

Venice has flooded. But while worry about the worst floods in a decade and warnings about the impacts of climate change and sea level rise dominate most of the media coverage, there’s a more complex story to be told.

Piazza San Marco during Venice’s acqua alta (flooding).

In Venice, floods are a feature, not a bug. The city was founded by people fleeing the Huns. They were safe in the lagoon (a word borrowed from Venetian), where horses and armoured men could not advance: the soggy ground would slow the enemy, the tide would wash them out.

Halfway between land and sea, trade is the only way to make a living. And so Venetians became successful merchants and built a magnificent city, with dazzling palaces and splendid churches filled with delightful works of art.

Read the report from The Conversation by the Professor of Economics from the  University of Sussex, Richard Tol - "Venice is flooded, but other cities are in much greater danger.”

Peru’s Floods Follow Climate Change's Deadly Extreme Weather Trend

Peru's worst floods in nearly a century have killed more than 70 people, left 70,000 homeless in nearly every province and damaged 130,000 structures, including ancient archaeological sites. The downpours inundated the country in the first half of March, then moved north over Colombia, causing a mudslide that killed hundreds.

Flooding in Peru has left tens of thousands of people
homeless, following the global trend of extreme weather
 made more likely by climate change. 

The intense rain and flooding in Peru took emergency workers and scientists by surprise, because such extreme downpours typically are associated with a large-scale El Niño phenomenon. But the latest El Niño ended nearly a year ago.

The flooding instead has been linked to an exceptional and sudden emergence of extra-warm ocean waters just off Peru's coast, what scientists call a coastal El Niño. Since mid-March, NOAA satellites have showed this patch of the eastern Pacific as the most anomalously warm ocean region in the world. 

It won't be clear whether human-caused global warming was a direct factor in the flooding unless scientists do an attribution study. That would determine how much the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases increased the odds of it happening. But the unusual heat blast and flooding are consistent with global warming, according to scientists.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Peru’s Floods Follow Climate Change's Deadly Extreme Weather Trend.”