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New normal: Climate crisis to bring extreme rainfall more often, scientists say
Indonesians should be ready to see more flooding as the country’s rainy seasons will be shorter but more intense compared with previous periods.
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Hundreds of activists and students take to the streets in Jakarta in the Climate Strike movement to demand the government take climate-change mitigation more seriously. (JP/A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil)
W
hile officials and politicians in Jakarta indulge in a blame game over responsibility for the severe flooding in Greater Jakarta, it seems that few people are willing to acknowledge that the climate crisis has hammered the country once again by inundating the capital in more water than it could cope with.
Aside from revealing the real culprit behind the floods, scientists also broke the bad news that such extreme weather might become “a new normal” in the future, urging everyone to be more prepared ahead of future disasters.
Severe flooding has soaked large parts of Jakarta and its neighboring cities since New Year’s Eve, killing over 40 people and forcing around 170,000 others to leave their submerged homes. Many declared the floods to be the worst in the capital since 2013.
According to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the severe flooding was mainly caused by some of the heaviest rainfall in the city’s history, with other causes such as a lack of water-catchment areas and ground subsidence.
The agency recorded rainfall intensity of 377 millimeters per day at Halim Perdanakusuma Air Force Base in East Jakarta on New Year’s Eve. The previous heaviest rainfall in the city was in 2007, when rainfall intensity reached 340 mm per day.
This has been caused by a combination of several weather phenomena happening over Java Island, such as the encounter of two winds coming from the north and south of the island resulting in huge cloud formations over Java.
Aside from the weather phenomenon, the agency revealed the recent extreme weather was part of a trend of increasing rainfall in Greater Jakarta. The BMKG has recorded that rainfall in the area has risen by 10 to 20 mm in 10 years.
