In the wake of the kids being trapped in the cave, you just knew someone had to run something like this. In this case, it’s the NY Times’ Nadja Popovich and Kendra Pierre-louis, who want to remind us that no one’s suggesting that the kids being trapped was climate change, it’s just climate change
Does Climate Change Have Anything to Do With Floods in Thailand?
After 12 members of a youth soccer team and their coach were trapped in the Tham Luang Cave in northern Thailand nearly three weeks ago, their plight, and then their rescue, captured the world’s attention.
By now, it’s well known that their predicament was caused by rising floodwaters in the cave. What is less known is that the pattern of precipitation that ensnared them is in keeping with broader changes to the region’s seasonal monsoon that researchers have attributed to climate change.
“Over the South Asian landmass, we’ve seen that extreme rainfall events have become more frequent,†said Amit Tandon, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who studies ocean systems.
No one is suggesting that climate change itself was responsible for trapping the boys in the cave. Brief downpours have always been common during Thailand’s wet season, which runs from late May to early October. Periods of a week or two of relatively heavy rainfall are punctuated by drier periods.
See? No one is suggesting. They’re just hintimating. Climaggesting?
The alternating dry and wet periods are called the intraseasonal oscillation, said Arnold L. Gordon, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. That variation has always happened, unrelated to climate change. But what has changed in recent years is that those wet periods have been wetter.
“It’s likely climate change, in the sense that there’s more moisture in the air,†Dr. Gordon said. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and “when the air has more moisture in it, you would get wetter wet bands and drier dry bands,†he said.
Which is not proof of man-caused climate change, just that climate changes. Which it always does.
Flash floods were known to be a danger in the cave, and a sign at the entrance warned against entering in the rainy season. But the strongest rains normally begin in July, so the boys and their coach may have been caught off guard when they ventured inside the relatively dry cave on June 23. Though the total June rainfall in the area, 9.6 inches, was only slightly higher than average, five of those inches fell between June 21 and 28, according to Eric Leister, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather. The resulting floodwaters trapped the team and complicated rescue efforts.
And taken altogether, it sure looks like ‘climate change’ is being blamed, does it not?
