Devastating floods might be more common than thought

Sasha Harris-Lovett in Sci-Tech Today: Keep the sandbags handy. Previous flood assessments have underestimated the actual risk of dangerous floods in many parts of the country, according to a new study. By looking back at the historical weather records, researchers have found an important synergy between two flood risk factors in coastal zones that has often gone overlooked.

In the past, engineers usually determined flood risk for coastal areas by looking at the separate probabilities of intense rainfall and the especially high seas caused by raging wind, called storm surges. But some of the worst floods in coastal areas are caused by the unfortunate concurrence of big storm surges with high rainfall -- a double-whammy for flooding, because it can result in the sea spilling over onto land while rivers and urban drainage systems overflow onto the streets.

By examining these two phenomena together, researchers showed that heavy precipitation and high seas are occurring in tandem more often in many coastal cities, especially along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S. The results were published this week in Nature Climate Change.

"This is an important yet less studied aspect of vulnerability along the coastline," said Shaleen Jain, a civil and environmental engineer at the University of Maine and one of the authors of the study. Nearly 40% of the U.S. population lives in coastal counties, researchers noted.

The scientists combed through historical records of rainfall, tide gauge readings and hurricane tracks dating back to 1900 for 30 port cities around the continental United States. They noted all the instances where high storm surges corresponded to strong rainfall.

Neither the frequency of big storm surges nor heavy rainfall alone have changed dramatically since 1900, but the probability of them occurring at the same time -- and the resulting devastating floods -- has shown a marked increase in many U.S. cities, said Thomas Wahl, a coastal engineer at the University of South Florida and the lead author of the study. These cities include Boston; New York City; Tampa, Fla.; Houston; San Diego; Los Angeles; and San Francisco....

Flooding in 2001 from Hurricane Gabriel near Tampa, Florida. Photo from NOAA

UNHCR Malawi helps flood victims to rebuild shattered lives

A press release from the UNHCR: The floods, when they came, came without warning. They were Malawi's worst in 20 years, sweeping through 15 districts in January 2015 and forcing 174,000 people to flee their
homes. Sixty-two people were killed and thousands more risked disease. Now, thanks to nearly US $600,000 from a special UN emergency fund, UNHCR Malawi has given affected populations a chance to rebuild their lives.

The UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has enabled UNHCR Malawi to provide core relief items to 8,120 households in the worst-hit districts of Machinga, Zomba, Mulanje and Phalombe. Between May 24 and June 4 this year, kitchen sets, blankets, sleeping mats and insecticide-treated mosquito nets were distributed to thankful locals.

Women were particularly excited by the kitchen sets, having had to try and find work to raise money to buy cooking pots, plates, cups, and other household items lost in the floods.

"I was going to sell sand, but now I do not have to," one woman told UNHCR. "It would take me a very long time to recover the lost items, but this has now changed, thanks to UNHCR."

Men, too, were grateful for UNHCR's help. "The blankets and mats are just what we needed to pull through this bad weather," said one male recipient. "And the mosquito nets will safe guard against malaria."

Locator map of Malawi by TUBS, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Catastrophic Chinese floods triggered by air pollution

Roland Pease at Science News: What atmospheric scientist Jiwen Fan saw on her television in July 2013 appalled her. The worst flooding to hit China in 50 years was happening in Sichuan province, in the same place that had been devastated by a massive earthquake just 5 years earlier. Over the course of 5 days, 73 centimeters of rain pounded the mountains, peaking at 29 centimeters in a single day. Rivers burst their banks and poured through city streets, washing away homes, factories, and bridges. Steep valley slopes collapsed in deadly landslides. About 200 people died, and a further 300,000 were displaced.

But Fan was worried about more than just the immediate effect of the floods. The Richland, Washington–based researcher—an expert on air pollution and climate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington—wondered how they had gotten so strong so fast. The Sichuan basin, surrounded by mountains that trap smoke billowing from its industrial centers, is “notorious” for its dirty air, she says. Did air pollution play a role? To find out, she and her team of Chinese, American, and Israeli researchers designed precision computer simulations to model what had happened.

Air pollution can affect precipitation in many ways. Sometimes, the aerosol particles in smoke can reduce or delay rain. Sometimes, they can make thunderstorms more intense. Their best understood interaction is in changing how water vapor condenses to form droplets in clouds. But Fan and her team have proposed a first: that pollution also changes some air circulation patterns that lead to rainclouds.

In the case of the Sichuan storms, they write in a paper published online before print in Geophysical Research Letters, soot in particular contributed to the catastrophic flooding. It prevented rainclouds from forming over the basin during the day, leading to more intense rainfall in the mountains that evening. “We were amazed at the scale of the effect the pollution had,” Fan says. “Effectively it redistributed the precipitation from the wide area of the basin into the mountains.”...

From the 2013 flooding in Sichuan, shot by 人神之间, Wikimedia Commons, under the  Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Major Midwest flood risk underestimated by as much as five feet, study finds

Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom: As floodwaters surge along major rivers in the midwestern United States, a new study from Washington University in St. Louis suggests federal agencies are underestimating historic 100-year flood levels on these rivers by as much as five feet, a miscalculation that has serious implications for future flood risks, flood insurance and business development in an expanding floodplain.

“This analysis shows that average high-water marks on these river systems are rising about an inch per year — that’s a rate ten times greater than the annual rise in sea levels now occurring due to climate change,” said Robert Criss, PhD, professor of geology in the Department of E
arth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and author of the study.

Published this month in an advance online issue of the Journal of Earth Science, the findings are important, Criss said, because many of the nation’s flood-control river levee systems are not engineered to withstand floods that rise much higher than the projected 100-year flood level. Any flood that rises even a few inches over the top of a 100-year levee has the potential to cause a catastrophic breach of the flood control system, he warns.

Based on complicated equations currently used by key federal agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the official 100-year flood level is a key national index of potential flood severity. Levees are commonly designed to withstand floods at “100-year” levels and “100-year” flood zones are delineated on detailed flood insurance maps produced by FEMA.

Criss, a hydrogeologist who has studied water flows on major rivers for decades, has long argued that man-made river control systems, such as levees, locks, dams and navigation-enhancing dikes, have gradually increased the odds of catastrophic flooding by tightly constricting river channels and preventing floodwaters from flowing naturally into surrounding wetlands and floodplains....

Jefferson Highway in Melville, Louisiana during the flood of 1927.

Ghana destroys hundreds of homes in capital in bid to prevent floods

Matthew Mpoke Bigg in Reuters: Bulldozers razed hundreds of homes and businesses in the poor Sodom and Gomorrah neighborhood of Ghana's capital on Saturday so the authorities can start widening a lagoon to prevent a repeat of this month's deadly floods.

Some residents said security forces sprayed them with tear gas after they threw stones to protect their livelihoods from the bulldozers. By evening, thousands were stranded in the rain amid rubble and household goods strewn for more than a mile.

"What they have done is not good for us because this is where some of us work and take care of our families," said scrap metal merchant Muhammed Abdul Karim as he surveyed the wreckage of his shack and the motorized tricycle he uses to haul iron.

Flood control has become an urgent problem for President John Mahama's government since more than 50 people drowned in torrents caused by blocked drains on June 3-4, a tragedy that exposed the country's creaking infrastructure.

The same night 96 people sheltering from the floods at a downtown gas station died when it exploded in the worst disaster in decades in the West African country.

The incidents add to the difficulties facing President Mahama 18 months before the government faces voters in what is likely to be a tight election in one of Africa's more stable democracies....

Jamestown in Accra, shot by Adotey Hoffman, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Flash flood risks increase as storm peak downpours intensify

EurekAlert via the University of New South Wales: Patterns of peak rainfall during storms will intensify as the climate changes and temperatures warm, leading to increased flash flood risks in Australia's urban catchments, new UNSW Australia research suggests.

Civil engineers from the UNSW Water Research Centre have analysed close to 40,000 storms across Australia spanning 30 years and have found warming temperatures are dramatically disrupting rainfall patterns, even within storm events.

Essentially, the most intense downpours are getting more extreme at warmer temperatures, dumping larger volumes of water over less time, while the least intense periods of precipitation are getting weaker. If this trend continues with future warming, the risk of flooding due to short-term extreme bursts of rainfall could increase even if the overall volume of rain during storms remains the same. The findings were published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"These more intense patterns are leading to more destructive storms, which can significantly influence the severity of flood flows," says lead author and PhD candidate Conrad Wasko, from the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "The climate zones we studied in Australia are representative of most global climates, so it's very likely these same trends will be observed around the world."

Previous studies have looked at rainfall volumes over the total duration of storms, but this latest UNSW study is the first to look at temporal rainfall patterns within storms. Australian Bureau of Meteorology data from 79 locations across the country were used instead of computer simulations....

Photo by Shootthedevgru,Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Balkans still recovering one year after catastrophic floods

International Orthodox Christian Charities: It's been a difficult year since record rainfall drenched the Balkans last spring, unleashing the worst flooding in more than 100 years and leaving a trail of destruction across Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. More than 70 people lost their lives, while hundreds of thousands of survivors had to evacuate as family homes and farms, roads and utilities were damaged or destroyed. Relentless summer and fall rains renewed flooding, which slowed recovery and threatened to keep many families from having warm and dry shelter in time for winter.

...From its offices in Serbia and Bosnia, International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) responded on the heels of the disaster, ensuring the delivery of relief to vulnerable families in the region's hardest hit communities. Through the financial support of church and private donors in the US, Australia and New Zealand, and close cooperation with local partners, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Red Cross, IOCC's ongoing assistance has helped thousands of survivors like Ljubica and Mladen return to their homes and resume their lives. More than 800 families have received support from IOCC with cleanup, home repair kits filled with construction materials, or replacement stoves and refrigerators.

The raging waters not only damaged homes and businesses, but also swept away desks, books, computers and lab equipment from school classrooms. Schooling came to a standstill for the 950 students of Šamac. Through your support, IOCC has helped restore the learning environment for the community's schoolchildren.

...More than 1,400 schoolchildren from the Serbian towns of Kladovo and Obrenovac suffered similar losses in their communities. The only primary school in the village of Tekija near Kladovo was so badly damaged by waves of mud and debris that the entire student body has had to be bussed daily to a school in Kladovo. IOCC is taking action with the installation of a new roof and heating system to be completed in time for Tekija's children to return to their own school next fall...

NASA image of 2014 flooding in Bosnia and Serbia

Flood risk to nuclear reactors raises meltdown fears

Paul Brown in the Ecologist: ...All nuclear plants need large quantities of water for cooling so all must be built close to the sea, large rivers or lakes. This makes them vulnerable to sea level rise, storm surges and to the possible collapse of large dams upstream from poor construction, floodwater or seismic activity.

Since nuclear plants are designed to operate for as long as 60 years and need around a further century to decommission, accelerating sea level rise and more intense rainfall may present serious problems. There are currently 435 operating nuclear reactors in the world, many of them potentially vulnerable to flooding because of natural disasters. Examples from the UK, Finland and the US show that the extent of the danger is not always being disclosed.

... The same fears [of flooding] were raised in the US by the Union of Concerned Scientists after a report was leaked about the danger to nuclear reactors from dams bursting. According to a report by the US Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRC), which had been withheld, more than 30 nuclear installations were in danger from flooding. The Commission was later accused of using security concerns to mask embarrassing information.

Among many revelations in the report was the fact that the authorities had known for a decade or more that the failure of a dam upstream from the Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina would cause floodwater to overwhelm its three reactors, possibly causing a catastrophic meltdown The odds of the dam bursting were far higher than thechances of the accident that devastated Fukushima.

Oconee is one of the largest nuclear plants in America and has been operating since 1983. Its owner, Duke Energy, remains confident that it could shut the plant down safely in an hour, before floodwaters from upstream could reach the reactors. The NRC has decided that this is sufficient safeguard....

A 1974 image of the control room at the Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina

Trends in the frequency and intensity of floods across the central United States

Journalist's Resource: In North America the winter of 2014-2015 was one for the record books — in particular, 108.6 inches of snow fell in Boston, breaking a longstanding record. But melting snow can bring rising waters, as indicated by a March 2015 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which highlighted the approaching flood risks for New England and Upstate New York as well as for southern Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.

The role of human-induced climate change in the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events is well established. The 2014 Vermont Climate Assessment found that since 1960 average temperatures in that state have climbed 1.3 degrees and annual precipitation by nearly 6 inches, with the majority of the increase occurring after 1990. The 2011 Vermont floods and those in North Dakota in 2009 show how devastating such events can be. The projected rise in sea levels will also create profound challenges for coastal communities large and small.

According to a 2013 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), just 18% of Americans living in flood zones have the required insurance — not comforting news for them or for federal and state governments, charged with providing material and financial disaster relief after the fact. Data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) indicates that between 2006 and 2010, the average flood claim was nearly $34,000, and large events can impose substantially higher costs. According to the CRS, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) paid out between $12 and $15 billion after Hurricane Sandy — more than triple the $4 billion in cash and borrowing au
thority it initially had. Starting in 2016, states seeking to receive disaster-preparedness funds must have plans in place to mitigate the effects of climate change, or risk losing funding, FEMA announced in March 2016.

A 2015 study published in Nature Climate Change, “The Changing Nature of Flooding across the Central United States,” examines long-term trends in the frequency and intensity of flood events. The researchers, Iman Mallakpour and Gabriele Villarini of the University of Iowa, used data from 774 stream gauges over the period 1962 to 2011. Gauges had at least 50 years of data with no gaps of more than two continuous years. The 14 states examined were Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin....

North Dakota flood response, shot by The National Guard, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Angolan provincial governor decrees 24 hours of mourning

AllAfrica.com via Angola News Agency: The governor of the southern Benguela province, Isaac Francisco dos Anjos, Friday declared a 24-hour mourning over the death of 66 citizens victim of heavy rains that hit the region on 11 March.

The tragedy hit mainly the municipalities of Lobito, Catumbela and Benguela.

In a press release delivered to Angop, the government expressed solidarity and dismay to the family of the rain victims.

In addition to the sixty-six people died in Lobito, among adults and children, the rain also destroyed 119 houses, 8 schools and 42 houses without coverage....

From a 2009 flood in Luanda, Angola, shot by Paulo César Santos, Wikimedia Commons,under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication 

Disaster-prone Madagascar battles flooding and drought

IRIN: Authorities in Madagascar are struggling to respond to increasingly severe flooding in the central highlands region of the country that includes the capital, Antananarivo, in addition to a prolonged drought in the south.

The latest round of flooding, which started when three rivers that cross Antananarivo – the Sisaony, Ikopa and Imamba – burst their banks during a storm on 24 February, has left 19 people dead and an estimated 36,000 displaced, according to the National Office for the Management of Risks and Catastrophes (BNGRC in French). A further 40,000 people were displaced in 13 other districts.

On Wednesday, BNGRC issued a new alert warning that a low-pressure system just off the island’s west coast was expected to bring more torrential rainfall to the central highlands region. Several neighbourhoods in Antananarivo remain braced for further flooding and landslides over the coming days.

The current flooding adds to the many challenges already facing the city in the wake of Tropical Storm Chedza, which caused 68 deaths and almost 80,000 displacements across Madagascar - over 16,000 in Antananarivo alone - during the weekend of 17 January. In the aftermath, several of the city’s public spaces, such as sports stadia, have been providing temporary shelter for the displaced.

NASA image of a 2010 flood near the Betsiboka River in Madagascar

Flooding, wildfires shake Argentina

Terra Daily via AFP: The heaviest rain in decades pounded much of central and western Argentina on Tuesday, prompting evacuations, even as wildfires roared across much of the parched far south.

Rain has been heaviest in the provinces of Cordoba, San Luis, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe's capital city of the same name, forecasters said. In the central-western region, "this is the worst weather disaster we have seen in the past 50 years," said Cordoba governor Jose Manuel de la Sota.

His province alone has seen at least seven people killed and 1,000 evacuated in the past two weeks. In San Luis province "there are families who have lost everything," said Facundo Dominguez, mayor of Concaran.

Flooding in Madagascar capital kills at least 14

Terra Daily via AFP: At least 14 people died in flooding Friday in the Madagascan capital Antananarivo after a night of torrential rain caused dams to burst, rescue services said.

About 24,000 people were driven from their homes in the floods and several neighbourhoods in the Indian Ocean island nation were being evacuated, the country's emergency management bureau said.

"Due to the emergency, we call on all schools, churches, town halls, covered gymnasiums and those of goodwill to facilitate the sheltering of victims," a statement from the bureau said. Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo visited the affected areas early Friday.

Three rivers flow in the area of the capital. A number of dams gave way under the weight of the floodwaters, sweeping away around 50 houses, the statement said. Electricity was also cut to parts of the capital....

In northwestern Madagascar, the Betsiboka River flows toward the coast, its braided streams emptying into the Bombetoka Bay. In late March 2010, however, not long after Tropical Cyclone Hubert passed through the region, part of the river pushed over its banks, flooding nearby agricultural fields. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image on March 23, 2010. Immediately south of the Betsiboka River, which is visible in the large image, this area is roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the coast. The wide beige-and-green swath filling most of the image is flooded, and uneven rectangles demarcate individual fields. Only areas of relatively high ground appear to have escaped standing water.

UNDP pledges to assist Malawi recover from floods disaster

Vatican Radio: ...Malawi is regularly hit by floods and droughts. This requires emergency responses of varying size each year. This year, according to the UN News Service, flooding has caused displacement of over 170,000 people, while an estimated 116,000 households have lost their crops and livestock. In Nsanje district alone, 79 people are confirmed dead with another 153 people still missing.

...A United Nations (UN) wide effort has been launched to support those in need and mitigate the potential risks of disease and food shortages. In addition to the important work provided by the World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in airlifting supplies and providing clean water and sanitation, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other agencies are poised to help in early recovery efforts.

 Ensuring livelihood, economic and social recovery – reestablishing schools such as Jimmy Mbamere’s – is crucial.

 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is already planning early recovery and has put in place an adviser who will engage with the government and other UN agencies to ensure a comprehensive early recovery strategy.... 

Delaware's new maps to show future flood risks

Molly Murray in Delawareonline: There's a new worst-case scenario for future flood riisk in Delaware – worse than the state's sea level rise maps, worse than flooding from 100-year storms plotted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This mapping project takes that 100-year storm flood level and adds three feet to it.

So at the south end of Rehoboth Beach, the maps – not yet publicly available – show places that are high and dry on the FEMA maps in a 100-year-storm, but are inundated with water during that same storm once sea level rises three feet.

The new mapping tool is designed to help state officials plan where and how to build future roads, bridges, buildings and other structures ev
en when they aren't within a currently mapped flood zone. It can also be used as a tool during reconstruction and to avoid places where future flooding is likely.

"The new maps are not regulatory," said Susan Love, a planner with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. "They are for guidance." In fact, said state Environmental Chief David S. Small, there is no one within state government to enforce the use of the maps by state agencies.

Small and others stressed they were strictly advisory and had no impact on where local government and private landowners could or should build. "It doesn't mean we are taking your rights away," said state Planner Constance Holland. But, she added, "it is better building."...

The aftermath of a 1913 flood in New Jersey (near Delaware)

Dire conditions for Malawi's flood survivors

IRIN: For those who have lost everything in southern Malawi’s Chikwawa District, just getting the next meal is now the priority. “Life is unbearable here. We hardly get food, but what else can we do? We cannot go back to our homes. They are under water and probably [fallen] down by now,” said displaced Aman Maomao, who is among hundreds sheltering in the grounds of a local public building.

In total 1.15 million Malawians have been affected by the flooding of 15 of the country’s 28 districts, which followed heavy rains a month ago. In all, some 336,000 people have been displaced and 276 are missing or dead.

“We have been hit and we are in this situation. There is nothing we can do. We are waiting for the necessities, as we cannot go back home,” said a man who identified himself as Aswell Guta.

When it rains at night, the displaced do their best to find some space in the few tents but they are usually used for medical consultations and are too small to be decent dormitories. They are segregated by sex, but not by age: children share the sleeping quarters with adults. In other displacement sites, men and women share tents.

Only one of the 20 displacement sites in Chikwawa district has enough tents to meet the needs of those living there. In the others many sleep in the open, with few cooking utensils, mosquito nets and buckets....

Midwestern US states are getting soaked by rise in damaging floods

Maria Galluci in the International Business Times: The U.S. Midwest is getting soaked. Damaging floods are hounding the region with increasing frequency, leading to billions of dollars in agricultural losses and displacing thousands of people, a new study found. Scientists say the trend will likely get worse in coming decades as the effects of climate change accelerate.

Fourteen states in the Midwest and surrounding area saw “increasingly more frequent flood episodes” from 1961 to 2011, according to a University of Iowa study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers pored over daily geological reports from 774 stream gauges, and found that about a third of stations experienced increasingly frequent flooding. Only 9 percent of stations showed a decrease in flood events.

“There was a feeling that these flood events have been increasing, but the question was, Is it just our perception of the recent past vs. present?” Gabriele Villarini, an engineering professor at Iowa and the report’s lead author, said. “So that’s when we decided to do this analysis.”

Five major floods have pummeled the Midwest region over the past two decades, including a record 2008 disaster in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that caused up to $6 billion in flood-related damage and forced 25,000 people from their homes...Nationwide, many states have also seen a rise in “nuisance flooding,” the minor events that shut down roads down and clog storm drains but aren’t particularly dangerous, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last fall....

Villarini said the increased frequency of Midwest floods is largely the result of changes in regional temperatures and rainfall patterns. In the northern states, the spring season has become steadily warmer over the past few decades, while at the same time, snowmelt -- the watery surface runoff caused by melting snow -- has also increased. In other areas, heavy rainfall events are happening more often, leading to more frequent flooding.

...But he noted that the findings are consistent with how climate scientists generally believe global warming is affecting the hydrological cycle. As the atmosphere warms up, it can retain more moisture; all that added vapor, in turn, can lead to more intense and frequent precipitation. In the Midwest, that could lead to more “erosion declining water quality and negative impacts on transportation, agriculture, human health and infrastructure,” according to the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping 2014 report by the White House....

Cedar Rapids in a 2008 flood, shot by Matt Herzberger Matt Herzberger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

UN agency continues distribution of emergency health kits to Nepal's flood survivors

UN News Centre: Five months after a series of landslides and subsequent flooding brought devastation to large swathes of Nepal, thousands of survivors continue to remain exposed to bitter temperatures and wintry conditions, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned.

The UN agency – which has a mandate to focus on improving sexual and reproductive health issues for women around the world – has been active on the ground since mid-August when the Government of Nepal launched an appeal for humanitarian assistance following the massive flooding and landslides which affected some 130,000 people across 23 of the country’s districts.

The agency has since been distributing so-called ‘dignity kits’ containing warm winter clothes, flashlights, soap, and sanitary napkins, as well as reproductive health kits to uprooted families. The reproductive health kits, for their part, are made up of medicines, equipment to support safe deliveries, family planning supplies and supplies to aid in the treatment of rape.

Overall, each kit is designed to provide reproductive health services to between 10,000 and 30,000 women for a three-month period....

A September 2014 flood in Nepal, shot by Beemall.99, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license 

The White House: A new flood standard for federal investments will help communities weather climate change, extreme storms

John Podesta and Craig Fugate in the White House blog: When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, the storm sent water cascading into the South Ferry subway station, pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, inundating neighborhoods from Staten Island to Queens. At Battery Park in lower Manhattan, water reached more than 9 feet above the average high-tide line.

One factor fueling the surge -- New York Harbor, where waters have risen about a foot since 1900. We know that rising sea levels, higher average temperatures, higher ocean temperatures, and other effects of climate change will make extreme weather events more frequent and more severe. And the climate is changing -- earlier this month, NASA and NOAA announced that 2014 was the hottest year on record globally, meaning that 14 of the 15 hottest years in recorded history have happened this century.

That’s why when we invested billions to help communities rebuild from Sandy, we also committed to “build back better” -- to rebuild infrastructure to a higher standard so it can withstand the increased risks posed by sea level rise and other climate impacts.

Today, the White House is building on that experience by releasing a new flood risk management standard for new and rebuilt federally funded structures in and around floodplains. This new resilience standard will help ensure taxpayer dollars are well spent on infrastructure that can better withstand the impacts of flooding.

Agencies will have the flexibility to choose among different approaches to apply the resilience standard -- by using the best methods informed by the best available, actionable climate science; by building two or three feet, depending on how critical the structure is, above the 100-year flood level; or by building above the 500-year flood level.

...The standard announced today leverages the experience gained through the Hurricane Sandy recovery and closely tracks flood elevation requirements already adopted in at least 350 jurisdictions across the country. It does not alter flood standards for levees and will not affect the standards or rates of the National Flood Insurance Program. On behalf of the federal government, FEMA will solicit public input prior to the implementation of the new standard for 60 days online and through a series of public meetings in flood-prone areas around the country....

Hurrcane Sandy damage to the New Jersey coast, US Air Force photo

After intense flooding, Malawi desperately needs scale-up in international aid – UN experts

UN News Centre: The international community must rapidly respond to the devastating flooding affecting Malawi with critical humanitarian aid and appropriate funding, a group of United Nations human rights experts affirmed today, warning that the African country was facing “its worst flooding in living memory.”

In a press release, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, and the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Léo Heller, encouraged the international community to do “everything possible to meet the current serious shortfall in funds and provision of essential aid,” especially as only a quarter of the urgently required $81 million of a Preliminary Response Plan had been received to date.

“The flooding has displaced large numbers of people and presents massive and complex challenges for Governments and their humanitarian allies in the short, medium and longer-term,” Mr. Beyani said.

“Evacuation of affected populations should be undertaken where necessary to save lives, and an effective humanitarian response is essential to address the needs of internally displaced people and others affected,” he continued. “Helping people to return and reconstruct devastated homes - when circumstances allow - will be just one challenge among many to rebuild lives and livelihoods and should be part of a broader recovery plan.”

Malawi is regularly hit by floods and droughts, requiring emergency responses of varying size each year. This year, flooding has caused displacement of over 170,000 people, while an estimated 116,000 households have lost their crops and livestock. In Nsanje district alone, 79 people are confirmed dead with another 153 people still missing...

Basket Bridge, Rumphi, northern Malawi, crossing South Rukuru river, shot by Michaelphoya, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International 4.0 license