Be better prepared as the climate changes
- Hong Kong must accept that extreme weather is now the norm rather than the exception, and come up with ideas to safeguard our city and its residents
From heatwaves and downpours to floods and bushfires, Mother Nature has reminded us that extreme weather is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
While more concerted efforts have been made to ease global warming, authorities the world over are still from time to time caught unprepared for natural disasters fuelled by climate change. The damage from these mishaps could be dear.
Credit goes to a group of academics for putting the relevant issues into perspective.
According to their projection, extreme weather will become more common, with rainfall possibly hitting 230mm in an hour, 45 per cent more than the record of 158mm during Hong Kong’s worst rainstorm in September.
The number of hot nights would also increase by 50 per cent to 48 by 2040, according to findings by scholars from the Chinese University, University of Hong Kong and the University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong academics warn future extreme weather needs more coordinated response
We trust the Hong Kong government needs no further warnings to prompt a greater sense of urgency on this front, having seen for itself the havoc wreaked by unusually strong typhoons and heavy downpours in recent years.
Calls for more coordinated response, including the establishment of a special interdepartmental group to proactively tackle extreme weather, should be heeded.
To be fair, the government had rightly geared up when the city was expected to be hit by strong typhoons. But the unpredictable nature of extreme weather means the authorities could only try their best to mitigate the impact.
A case in point is the drainage capacity. Designed to cope with rainstorms that strike “once in 200 years”, the system fell short of the capacity needed to survive September’s rainstorm, which officials described as “once in 500 years”.
The unusually warm autumn days are a reminder that we are living in an unpredictable global environment. In his policy address delivered in October, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu pledged to explore the use of big data and artificial intelligence to boost emergency preparedness and early-warning systems for extreme weather.
This includes using more pre-emptive and strategic approaches to deal with the challenges. Hopefully, the city will be better prepared before the next crisis strikes.
