After nearly a week of battering one country after another in a westward arc across the Mediterranean, Storm Daniel caused unprecedented floods in Libya that burst dams protecting the port city of Derna.
At least 2,300 are estimated to have died. At least 10,000 are missing. “I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared,” one government official told Reuters.
Now questions are being asked about how the storm had such an immense impact, and whether it was intensified by the change in Mediterranean weather patterns as a result of climate breakdown.
For months this summer, the region had already sweltered under an unprecedented heatwave. Scientists say that the heatwave raised sea surface temperatures, which could have encouraged the formation of a Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone, or “medicane”.
“While no formal attribution of the role of climate change in making Storm Daniel more intense has been conducted yet, it is safe to say that the Mediterranean sea surface temperatures have been considerably above average throughout summer,” said Dr Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University.
“This is certainly true for the region where Daniel could form and wreak havoc over Greece and now Libya … The warmer water does not only fuel those storms in terms of rainfall intensity, it also makes them more ferocious.”
But the storm itself was not wholly to blame for the destruction wreaked on Derna, where infrastructure, including the burst dams, was already in a parlous state, according to experts. More than a decade after Libya’s cities were bombarded by Nato navies and warplanes supporting a revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, its former longtime ruler, the oil-rich country remains a shadow of its former prosperity. Like many poorer countries, Libya simply was not ready for the extreme weather Daniel brought.
Callout
“It is important to recognise that the storm itself is not just the single cause of the loss of life,” said Dr Kevin Collins, a senior lecturer on environment and systems at the Open University.
“It is also partly a function of Libya’s limited ability to forecast weather impacts; limited warning and evacuation systems; and planning and design standards for infrastructure and cities.
“As our climate changes, understanding, planning for and adapting to these more extreme types of events needs to be done by individuals, businesses, and communities in all countries.”
Prof Lizzie Kendon, professor of climate science at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment, said: “We expect the intensity of heavy rainfall to increase as the world warms. This will not be realised as a smooth trend, and we should expect the occurrence of extreme events unprecedented in the observational record.
“Storm Daniel is illustrative of the type of devastating flooding event we may expect increasingly in the future, but such events can occur just due to the natural variability of the climate – as they did in the past. Therefore, care is needed before linking any specific extreme event to climate change.”
