What happens when extreme weather hits several places at once?
Exceptional monsoon rains washed away cars, bridges and homes in northern India, shortly after Delhi recorded its heaviest day of rainfall in more than 40 years. South Korea scrambled to rescue people trapped by floods and landslides. Back in America Vermont was battered by storms, and roads in New Hampshire collapsed after torrential rain.
Taken individually, such events would usually be notable in the regions where they occurred but largely ignored elsewhere unless they inspired particularly dramatic pictures. But seeing them all happen at once raises a global question. What happens when the world faces multiple climate-related disasters, in multiple places, at the same time? In its most recent assessment of climate science the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN-backed body, noted that “compound events"—two or more climate-related events that occur simultaneously or in quick succession, including in different regions—can “lead to extreme impacts that are much larger than the sum" of their individual parts.
The more disasters occur, it said, the harder it becomes to handle any of them. When extreme events occur in different places that are connected in some way—via agricultural supply chains, for example—the risks are particularly acute. In normal times damage to production in one agricultural area can often be made up elsewhere.
Since early 2022, for example, Russia’s war has severely restricted exports of grain from Ukraine, one of the world’s largest producers. But bumper harvests in Australia, Brazil and Canada ensured the ensuing shortages and price rises were not as severe as they might have been. That becomes harder when yields falter in several places at once.
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