10 times normal rainfall flooded Pakistan claims European Space Agency

• The European Space Agency says floods in Pakistan were caused by rain 10 times heavier than usual.
• The agency released satellite images of an area where the Indus River has overflowed, “effectively creating a long lake tens of kilometres wide”.
• More than 33 million people have been affected — one out of every seven Pakistanis — and reconstruction will cost $10 billion.

The European Space Agency said Thursday that the devastating floods in Pakistan were caused by rain 10 times heavier than usual, as it released satellite images of a vast lake created by the overflowing Indus river.

Rains, described as a “monsoon on steroids” by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have claimed hundreds of lives since June, unleashing powerful floods that have washed away swaths of vital crops and damaged or destroyed more than a million homes.

The ESA said in a statement that data from the EU’s Copernicus satellite was used to map the scale of the deluge from space to aid rescue efforts.

“Heavy monsoon rainfall — ten times heavier than usual — since mid-June have led to more than a third of the country now being underwater,” it said.

The agency released satellite images of an area where the Indus River has overflowed, “effectively creating a long lake tens of kilometres wide” between Dera Murad Jamali and Larkana.

According to officials, more than 33 million people have been affected — one out of every seven Pakistanis — and reconstruction will cost more than $10 billion.

Guterres has declared the floods a “climate catastrophe” and has requested $160 million in emergency funding.

While it is too early to quantify the role of global warming in the floods, scientists say the rains are in line with predictions that climate change will make the Indian monsoon wetter.

Based on climate models, a recent study predicted that exceptionally wet monsoons in the Indian subcontinent would become six times more likely during the twenty-first century, even if humanity reduced carbon emissions.

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