Heatwaves, Rain, And Flooding Are Signs Of Climate Change, And Pakistan Must Take Immediate Action.

Social media is a wash with horrifying images of the havoc monsoon rains that have wreaked on a wide swathe of Pakistan.

People living in low-lying areas, in the path of hill torrents, or on poorly made embankments are awash in the misery of floods brought in the wake of the monsoon spell.

However, if we remove the date from the posts, and newspaper and television reports, the realization would dawn that we have seen such images many times in the past.

Repeatedly, there have been glacial lake outburst floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, which rarely make it into the headlines.

Hill torrents raging down their beds, streams and rivers bursting their banks and sweeping away whatever comes in their way in Balochistan, leading to massive damage and loss of lives and livestock are a familiar feature whenever there are torrential rains. These have been alternating with the other extreme of drought, to which this region is also prone.

Sindh suffers from too little, and then too much water. This year, like a previous couple of years, the monsoon has been punishing and relentless.

Its towns and cities are inundated and there seems to be no end to the misery of the people because the water levels are not subsiding. The provincial capital, Karachi, has taken a battering due to unprecedented rains that have broken all previous records.

While parts of Punjab suffered from what is still being called a 'pre-monsoon' spell, with heavy rain and hail storms in March which flattened standing crops. And all of the above came on the heels of a severe heat spell that impacted all parts of the country, even the northern glacial valleys, which experienced temperatures in excess of 30 degrees centigrade.

What is causing the extreme weather events in Pakistan?

Well, this is what climate scientists and meteorological experts have been warning about for years now.

The unpredictability, frequency, and...