Typhoon Sepat was the third typhoon to strike the nation within two weeks. It caused incessant heavy rains all over the country. But in the rest of the world, there have been even more serious natural disasters and meteorological phenomena this year.
In the beginning of June, the Arabian Sea saw the formation of Gonu -- a tropical cyclone of almost legendary proportions. Its highest 10-minute average wind speed was 240kph, a wind force of 17 on the Beaufort scale. Gonu made landfall in Oman on June 5, becoming the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall on the Arabian Peninsula. It caused more than 70 deaths in the desert nation, and caused a rise in oil prices.
In last month and this month, South Asia saw continuous heavy rain for more than 20 days. An estimated 2 million people had to be evacuated from their homes and more than 1,400 people died. After this disaster, famine and contagious diseases threatened the north of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Disaster relief has been chaotic, and the countries will have to depend on foreign aid to rebuild after the disaster.
Other areas have experienced unusual weather. This May and June, the UK saw the heaviest rain in 200 years. Exceptional floods occurred in many provinces of China, including in dry areas like Xinjiang and Shaanxi. A 100-year-record amount of rain fell in Chongqing. And it has been raining incessantly in North Korea where floods have caused many losses.
Yet while some places in the world were suffering from floods, other areas were plagued by high temperatures for days on end, causing droughts and fires.
In the end of last month, temperatures in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece rose above 40oC. More the 500 people died because of the heat, and forest fires were almost out of control. Nearby Ankara suffered from drought and people tried to invoke the pity of heaven by praying for rain in public ceremonies.
In China to the south of the Yangtze, large areas saw record temperatures of more than 39oC. High temperatures in Fujian Province, across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan, continued for a month, breaking a record set in 1880.
The US Midwest has seen a very hot summer, and in the middle of this month temperatures in many areas were above 37oC for days at a time. Because of the hot weather, too much electricity was used in the New York area system, forcing the city's subway to come to a halt and causing serious traffic problems. Temperatures in Japan have been as high as 40.9oC, causing train rails to bend out of shape. Many Japanese suffered heat stroke and even died of the heat. Australia's worst drought in a thousand years has gone into its ninth continuous year, taking a heavy toll on farmers.
Official reports of the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) point out that in the first half of this year, there was a higher number of unusual meteorological phenomena than in the past, and the average temperatures in January and April had broken all past records.
The organization could not make any predictions as to whether there would be more unusual or extreme weather in the second half of this year.
In 1992, the first Earth Summit was held. At this summit, countries agreed on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), later followed up by the Kyoto Protocol. The UNFCCC demands that all countries take action to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and called on them to officially acknowledge global climate change. Although the US didn't want to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, US President George W. Bush made sure that plans were passed for climatological action, officially acknowledging the issue of climate change.
Now everyone acknowledges climate change, and some countries are emphasizing research, like the UK and Japan. In only 10 years, Japan has developed the Earth Simulator, a computer model of the planet, which can calculate and predict changes in the atmosphere, the ocean and on land. In 1992, South Korea and China also started to promote research in climate change. They not only train talented scientists, the results of these countries' research are also officially included in this year's report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Every single year, Taiwan sends a delegation to the UN climatological convention, but the nation's government is not allowed to join in the research effort. In the past 15 years, countries have not been able to come up with any clear results for predicting average climatological change and unusual weather incidents.
In the future, as climate change continues and natural disasters become more frequent, it will become harder and harder to handle these problems because they were not dealt with at an early stage when they were still somewhat small. This is a worrying development.
Liu Chung-ming is director of the Global Change Research Center at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US