Climate change, natural disasters September 2024-

 the International Disaster Charter website
NASA Applied Science Disasters website

UNDRR [UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction]’s Work Programme for 2024-25 comes at a critical juncture. It is built around strategic objectives that are geared to helping countries better understand the risks they face and to strengthen their disaster risk governance at all levels; to driving up investments in disaster risk reduction through stakeholder partnerships; and to integrating disaster risk reduction at the heart of sustainable development efforts.
There’s nothing natural about disasters. In fact, contrary to popular perception, we are far from powerless in the face of earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and pandemics. Such hazards may be inevitable, but their disastrous impacts are not: we can curb their devastating power by understanding their interrelated risks, setting up early warning systems and investing preemptively
Doing so is becoming ever more urgent as the accelerating pace of climate change causes more frequent longer-lasting and harsher weather events, and as many countries urbanise at unprecedented rates.
16 August 2021
How Indigenous knowledge could help manage wildfire risk
For many ecosystems, fire plays a key role in supporting and maintaining biodiversity.
For thousands of years, Indigenous people have purposefully used fire to shape the landscapes they inhabit.
A new study has found that Indigenous fire stewardship increases biodiversity in almost all of Earth’s terrestrial biomes.
Biodiversity keeps ecosystems more resilient to disturbances and provides immeasurable intrinsic, recreational and societal value.
8 August 2021
How Indigenous burning practices can help curb the biodiversity crisis.

3 October
Why Helene Caught So Many Residents Off Guard
As the process of rebuilding begins, many survivors face an expensive obstacle: a lack of flood insurance.
Western North Carolina lies hundreds of miles inland from any coast. The counties around the Blue Ridge Mountains sit at high elevations, away from the dense flood zones along the Atlantic. The idea that more than a foot of rain would rapidly overwhelm the region, sweeping up homes and ripping up vegetation, seemed almost unthinkable. But a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall, at least 200 people have died, and the death toll is expected to rise as the floodwaters recede and the debris clears.

8 September
‘Beautiful in its own way’: New forest emerges in Jasper National Park, bringing protection and new opportunities
(CTV Edmonton) Things are starting to look green again in Jasper.
Charred stumps and the remains of fire-ravaged trees still cover large tracts of land on the Jasper landscape, but life is returning quickly down below.
“This fire has even surprised me as a fire ecologist, with how quickly a lot of the ground cover has already started to come back,” said Landon Shepherd of Parks Canada.
“Even in the very severely impacted sites, both the rhizomes and the more extensive root systems of some of the trees and shrubs that were removed have already started to sprout pretty vigorously.”
The Jasper fire started as multiple fires that merged into one as they rippled through the forest, which was the driest it had been since the park began recording at the current weather station in 1962.
“In the last five years, we’ve been averaging two to four days of when we’ve been in extreme (conditions) during the entire fire season,” Shepherd said. “Leading up to this fire, we were in over two weeks of extreme.”
The fire was so intense it created its own weather system with winds powerful enough to toss a shipping container at the Wabasso Campground into the Athabasca River near the Wabasso Campground.

2-8 September
For the thirty-sixth week of 2024, the ASEAN region experienced 20 significant disasters, including floods, landslides, storms, and strong winds. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam were affected by these disasters. The Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB) of Indonesia reported flooding and strong winds in West Java, Jambi, Central Sulawesi, and North Sumatra. In the Philippines, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported the flooding, storms, landslides, and strong winds from Week 1, which had affected Regions I, II, III, CALABARZON, V, VI, VII, VIII, CAR, and NCR. Lastly, the Viet Nam Disaster and Dyke Management Authority (VDDMA) reported flooding, landslides, storms, strong winds, and storm surge in the Northern Region.