Libya faced the deadliest flooding event caused by tropical storm Daniel in September 2023 for over a century. Strong winds and heavy rainfall led to the collapse of two dams, resulting in floods that devastated houses, hospitals, highways, and electricity lines. Similarly, Dubai recorded the heaviest rain ever in the country in April 2024, leading to flood events in the country. However, the causes of floods in Libya and Dubai are not the same. Let us understand each case one by one.
In simple words, a flood is an overflow of water that submerges land that is usually dry, such as a river inundating its floodplain. Floods can be measured by their height, peak discharge, inundated area, and flow volume. These factors are crucial for judicious land use, bridge and dam construction, flood prediction, and control.
The discharge volume of a stream can be significantly different from month to month and year to year. A particularly striking example of this variability is the flash flood, i.e., a sudden, muddy, and turbulent torrent of water that rushes down a canyon or gulch. This rare, short-lasting phenomenon is typically caused by summer thunderstorms or the rapid melting of snow and ice in mountains. A flash flood can occur in a single tributary while the rest of the drainage basin remains dry. A flash flood is highly dangerous due to its sudden occurrence.
Libya Flood
Libya is located in North Africa. The majority of the country lies in the Sahara desert. Most of its population is concentrated along the coast and its immediate hinterland, where Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and Benghazi, another major city, are located. Libya is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on the north, Egypt on the east, Sudan on the southeast, Niger and Chad on the south, and Tunisia and Algeria on the west.
The 2023 Libya flooding was a devastating event that occurred in eastern Libya on September 10 and 11. Storm Daniel, a powerful Mediterranean cyclone, produced severe rainfall that soaked the area and caused floods, resulting in thousands of fatalities and around 10,000 missing persons. Two dams upstream from the city broke due to strain from the torrential rains, destroying a big part of the Libyan port city of Derna with a large flood of water and sludge.
Factors of flooding According to experts, there are three key factors: extreme weather, vulnerable geography, and crumbling infrastructure, which caused the most devastating floods to hit North Africa in almost a century.
- Extreme weather Libya’s eastern region experienced extreme rainfall from September 10 to 11, causing flooding in Al-Bayda, near Derna. The city generally receives about half an inch of rain in September and on an average 21.4 inches of rain annually, but on September 10 and 11, 2023, a record rainfall of 414.1 mm, exceeding 16 inches, was reported according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Similarly in Derna, where average monthly rainfall in September is less than 1.5 mm, over 150 mm was reported in just two days. The rains were accompanied by strong winds of up to 80 km/h.
Another weather event is Storm Daniel, also known as Cyclone Daniel, which formed in Greece and caused torrential rainfall and wind, causing floods and deaths in Spain, Turkey, and Bulgaria earlier in the month of September. Daniel transitioned into a tropical-like cyclone over the Mediterranean Sea, becoming stronger due to warm waters. It drifted south and unloaded excessive rainfall over northeastern Libya, where mountainous terrain overwhelmed dams. The Mediterranean was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer that year than in the past. - Vulnerable geography The city’s widespread damage was also attributed to its location at the end of a valley and its proximity to the Wadi Derna, a seasonal river that flows from mountains to the south (towards the sea) and is normally protected from flooding by dams. However, Storm Daniel battered the coast at night, and crashed into the city, unleashing flash floods down Wadi Derna.
- Crumbling infrastructure The collapse of the two dams in Derna exposed the deteriorating infrastructure of Libya. The country has been grappling with a prolonged conflict between two opposing factions for over a decade. Libya’s internationally recognised government is led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli. While, in Benghazi, the rival prime minister, Ossama Hamad, heads the eastern administration, which is backed by powerful military commander Khalifa Hiftar. In the tussle for power, the focus on socio-economic issues, such as maintaining and developing infrastructure, has been largely neglected.
Further, as flooding is quite rare in the Libya region, the country was not adequately prepared for the calamity. The country lacks flood-resilient structures and roads, particularly in Derna. Also, there is no early-warning system for such disasters.
Dubai Flood
Dubai, where the flooding events occurred in April 2024, is one of the wealthiest emirates of the United Arab Emirates. It is a port city situated at the base of the mountainous Musandam Peninsula.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), also known as the Emirates, is a federation of seven emirates located along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia in the Middle East. It shares land borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia, and maritime borders in the Persian Gulf with Qatar and Iran.
The United Arab Emirates experienced heavy rains resulting in the flooding of Dubai and its airport on April 16, 2024. The country receives an average of 140–200 mm of rainfall per year, while Dubai typically receives only 97 mm. The monthly average for April is only about 8 mm. Al Ain, a city which is 130 km away from Dubai received a record 254 mm of rainfall, the largest ever in a 24-hour period since 1949.
Causes The primary reason for these heavy rains was a storm system, which was passing through the Arabian peninsula and moving across the Gulf of Oman. However, the causes of the deluge, including cloud seeding, climate change, and El Nino, are being gradually identified. Let us discuss each of these reasons and identify which one is really responsible for such a devastating event.
Cloud seeding is a process where chemicals such as silver iodide are injected into clouds to boost rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern. The UAE where the average annual rainfall is very low and temperatures in summer can reach up to 50 °C conducts cloud seeding frequently over the years to increase precipitation. However, the UAE’s meteorology agency informed that no such operations were conducted prior to the storm in April, and also stated that the discussion of cloud seeding as the primary cause of heavy rainfall was misleading as cloud seeding cannot create clouds from nothing. It encourages water that is already in the sky to condense and make it rain in certain places. So, for cloud seeding, one first needs moisture; without it, there would be no clouds.
Climate change and other factors could have exacerbated a normal weather system, which led to the huge rainfall. A low-pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure ‘squeeze’ on the air. The powerful thunderstorm was triggered by that squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer ground level temperatures and colder higher up temperatures. Studies indicate that an increase in average temperature by 1 °C can increase the atmosphere’s capacity to hold about 7 per cent more moisture. Since 1850, the Earth’s average global temperature has risen by at least 1.1 °C, while the UAE has experienced a temperature increase of nearly 1.5 °C over the past 60 years. This makes storms more dangerous as it leads to an increase in precipitation intensity, duration, and frequency, which ultimately can cause severe flooding. The World Weather Attribution group, composed of climate scientists, has identified warming caused by burning fossil fuels as the most likely explanation for the increase in rainfall, although precise determination of the extent of this change is not yet available.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult to attribute any particular extreme weather event to climate change. Multiple factors like patterns of natural climate variability, such as El Nino and La Nina, contribute to such events. The most intense rainfall occurs during El Nino years in the equatorial pacific regions, such as 2023–24, and if twice the annual normal rainfall occurs in one or two days, it is undoubtedly a major source of flooding, particularly in urbanised regions and dry and semi-arid ecosystems with soils and sparse plants that have limited infiltration and transpiration capacity.
Impact of these Floods
Floods in Libya and Dubai had disastrous impact on the people living and working in the country. Libya experienced significant destruction, with entire neighbourhoods being swept away or submerged in floods, causing fears of thousands being killed in the country’s east. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and thousands more are missing in the Mediterranean port city of Derna alone, where two dams collapsed causing significant destruction of infrastructure. Satellite images reveal that previously established areas such as fields, farmlands, schools, suburban streets, and graveyards were destroyed or were covered with brown sludge.
Similarly, more than 1,000 scheduled flights in and out of Dubai’s airport (the second busiest airport of the world) were cancelled, resulting in days of delays. Floods caused people to abandon their vehicles on roads inundated with water. Some motorists were unable to return home due to blocked roads and had to sleep in their cars. Luxurious malls in the city experienced leaks due to rainwater seeping through ceilings, while malfunctioning of elevators in skyscrapers forced residents to climb stairs up dozens of floors.
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