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Comment by mring33621 | Hacker News Reader

Climate change is real and has changed the temporal distribution of rainfall, often increasing the interval between rainfalls, while also increasing the amount that falls, during rainy periods.

Longer durations of 'no rain' cause the ground harden to a much less porous, concrete-like surface that cannot absorb the rain, when it does come, fast enough. So the water pools and flows, causing flood conditions.

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The article also blames high amounts of glacial melt (to the point of bursting through glacial dams) sending a lot of extra water through waterways in a short amount of time.

With all due respect why are Glaciers melting in August.. or July or June. April and May are hot as hell in Indian Subcontinent.

edit: glaciers melt in summer, I am surprised why they are melting in rainy season. No matter how you vote, just explain why this odd behavior.

Why is that odd? Ice melts when it's warm.

Because you would have signs of glacial melt ahead of time. You would know in may if not June. Not in end of august.

Except it has happened about every 12 years throughout history

The ancients even created a name for it: La Nina.

Huh, I didn't believe you at first but apparently there was indeed very severe flooding in 2010, and again in 1992.

That said, back in 1992 this only affected 3 million people, and now it's 30 million. The population of the country only doubled over the same time span, so it seems like this year's flooding is easily five times worse than before

Maybe the increase of population was mostly in affected areas, not 5 times worse.

> back in 1992 this only affected 3 million people, and now it's 30 million. The population of the country only doubled over the same time span, so it seems like this year's flooding is easily five times worse than before

Or the distribution of people living in the flood plane drastically changed in that period. See my other comment @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32653203

Land-use matters. I don't have a good link but there has been reporting on the topic.

e.g. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-environment-fore...

Except this is our third La Nina year in a row, the first time that's ever happened:

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/wmo-forecasts-f...

That article only says it’s the first this century.

As long as you define century as 2000-2100, and not 1922-2022...

That is how "this century" would typically be understood

“This century” is fixed to start at 2000 until 2100, same as this decade is 2020–2029.

“Last hundred years” for the former interpretation.

Or 2001 until 2101, if you're being pedantic about the Nth century AD/CE.

(Because there is no year 0 in the AD/CE calendar, so the first century in the calendar starts in year 1, the second in 101, etc...)

What?

We had a triple dip in 1998, and before that 1976.

Also 1954-57.

Whatabout this thing that can happen at the same time as the climate changing due to human pollution?

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