Study: Rains That Led to Deadly Indian Landslides Were Made Worse by Climate Change 

Search operations continue after landslides hit Mundakkai village in Wayanad district in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 1, 2024. (Reuters)
Search operations continue after landslides hit Mundakkai village in Wayanad district in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 1, 2024. (Reuters)
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Study: Rains That Led to Deadly Indian Landslides Were Made Worse by Climate Change 

Search operations continue after landslides hit Mundakkai village in Wayanad district in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 1, 2024. (Reuters)
Search operations continue after landslides hit Mundakkai village in Wayanad district in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 1, 2024. (Reuters)

The heavy rains that resulted in landslides killing hundreds in southern India last month were made worse by human-caused climate change, a rapid analysis by climate scientists found Tuesday.

The study by the World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who use established climate models to quickly determine whether human-caused climate change played a part in extreme weather events around the world, found that the 15 centimeters (5.91 inches) of rain that fell in a 24-hour period July 29-30 was 10% more intense because of global warming.

The group expects further emissions of planet-heating gases will result in increasingly frequent intense downpours that can lead to such disasters.

Nearly 200 people were killed and rescuers are still searching for more than 130 missing people in Kerala state, one of India’s most popular tourist destinations.

“The Wayanad landslides are another catastrophic example of climate change playing out in real time,” said Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London and one of the authors of the rapid study.

Last month's rainfall that caused the landslides was the third heaviest in Kerala state since India's weather agency began record-keeping in 1901.

Last year over 400 people died due to heavy rains in the Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Multiple studies have found that India's monsoon rains have become more erratic as a result of climate change.

“Until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy, monsoon downpours will continue to intensify, bringing landslides, floods and misery to India,” said Zachariah.

India’s southern state Kerala has been particularly vulnerable to climate change-driven extreme weather. Heavy rainfall in 2018 flooded large parts of the state, killing at least 500 people, and a cyclonic storm in 2017 killed at least 250 people including fishers who were at sea near the state’s coasts.

“Millions of people are sweltering in deadly heat in the summer. Meanwhile, in monsoons, heavier downpours are fueling floods and landslides, like we saw in Wayanad,” said Arpita Mondal, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and one of the study’s authors.

Earlier this year another study by the same group found that deadly heat waves that killed at least 100 people in India were found to have been made at least 45 times more likely due to global warming.

India, the world’s most populous country, is among the highest current emitters of planet-heating gases and is also considered to be among the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate impacts.

“When it rains now, it rains heavily. In a warmer world, these extreme events will be more frequent and we cannot stop them. However, we can try to establish early warning systems for landslides and also avoid any construction activity in landslide-prone regions,” said Madhavan Rajeevan, a retired senior official at India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences who is from Kerala state.

Tuesday’s study also recommended minimizing deforestation and quarrying, while improving early warning and evacuation systems to help protect people in the region from future landslides and floods.

The study said the Wayanad region had seen a 62% decrease in forest cover and that that may have contributed to increased risks of landslides during heavy rains.

“Even heavier downpours are expected as the climate warms, which underscores the urgency to prepare for similar landslides in northern Kerala,” said Maja Vahlberg, climate risk consultant at Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre who was also an author of the study.



Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
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Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the Mediterranean's coldest waters, more normally associated with other types of oyster used for food rather than jewellery.

"We are looking into the possibility of producing cultivated pearls here," said Paolo Varrella, the head of a cooperative that has been breeding food oysters in the area since 2011.

The group has already made contact with pearl oyster farmers in Mexico to get tips on production techniques, Varrella said.

"The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but only in the last decade has it moved north" to the cooler Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas that lap the western Italian mainland, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a succession of alien warm-water species to enter the Mediterranean as it heats up due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian environmental research and protection institute ISPRA, said this trend had seen "an exponential increase" in the last decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt delicate ecosystems. In a few cases, such the spotted puffer fish and the scorpion fish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) expanse of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is heating up faster than the average of the world's seas, Falautano said.

BIG MONEY

Pearl production, more readily associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, has an annual global turnover of 11 billion dollars, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said the Radiata may produce gems similar to Japan's renowned "Akoya" pearls which have a diameter of 5-9 millimeters and a white color with shades of grey, pink and green.

If all goes well the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean is also blamed for an increase in violent storms such as the one that sank the luxury yacht of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat's cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expected to see a further increase this year.

"The huge amount of energy behind this heating can act as a fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena" such as the violent storm which appeared to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.