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By Suja Mary James with Inputs from Dr Partha Jyoti Das
Turkey’s architecture, music, and cuisine reflect the unique fusion of East and West. Several of the most powerful empires in history, including the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, has a rich and varied history. But this “diverse set of both oriental and European elements” is under severe climatic stress.
On February 6, 2023, a catastrophic earthquake with a 7.8 Richter scale magnitude struck Southern Turkey, with its epicenter in the Pazarck area of Kahramanmaras province. The quake affected the neighboring provinces of Adıyaman, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Malatya, Şanlıurfa, Diyarbakır, Elazığ and Adana.
Within nine hours, a second significant earthquake of magnitude 7.5 struck the area, inflicting more severe damage to these locations. In addition, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Hatay with its epicenter in the Defne district and a 5.6 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Malatya that occurred on February 20 and 27, respectively also contributed to an increasing death toll. The most recent AFAD (Disaster and Emergency Management Presidential) announcement indicates that 45,089 persons died, and 115,000 were injured during these events.
On March 15, 2023, in the provinces of Adiyaman and Sanlifurfa, flash floods brought on by heavy rains turned roadways into rivers, sweeping away cars and flooding homes and campgrounds where earthquake survivors were being housed.
Is it common?
The Republic of Turkey is a transcontinental nation with the majority of its territory in Western Asia’s Anatolia peninsula and a smaller fraction in Southeast Europe’s Balkan Peninsula. The region is prone to natural disasters because of its geological and topographic makeup as well as its climatic characteristics. The most common natural disasters in Turkey include earthquakes, floods, landslides, avalanches, and rock falls, which result in considerable loss of lives, injuries, and loss of property.
The location of Turkey, near the confluence of the African, Arabian, and Anatolian tectonic plates—three of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust—makes it prone to earthquakes. Arabia is advancing towards Europe from the north, pushing the Anatolian plate—on which Turkey rests—westward. Pressure on fault zones at the boundary of the tectonic plates increases as a result of plate movement. Earthquakes and ground trembling are brought on by the abrupt release of this pressure. It is believed that the most recent earthquake occurred on either the East Anatolian fault or the Dead Sea Transform fault, two of the main faults that define the boundary between the Anatolian and Arabian plates.
After earthquakes, floods are the natural disaster that causes the most destruction in Turkey. Flooding incidents make up over 30% of all-natural disasters in the nation. Flash floods that are brought on by heavy, protracted rainstorms are a normal event in Turkey, particularly around the shore. Turkey’s most significant cities experience regular flooding as a result of a combination of factors, including heavy rainfall, the colonization of floodplains by residential and commercial buildings, a high percentage of impervious surfaces, and insufficient drainage.
Also, major regions of Turkey are prone to forest fires -mainly during the summer, when temperatures can reach over 40ºC. Turkey reported losing 14,000 hectares to forest fires as of October 2022. In 2021, large wildfires in Turkey consumed an area larger than 200,000 hectares.
Influence of Climate Change
Turkey has a varied climate, with Mediterranean conditions in the south and west and scorching summers in the east, which is next to Syria and the Middle East. The existence of the Black Sea to the north, the varied topography, and the vast Russian plain, which serves as a source of extremely cold air in the winter, are some of the reasons that contribute to this complexity.
Turkey is susceptible to a number of natural calamities, including land degradation, rising water stress, and floods. Historically, compared to other nations in Europe and the CIS, Turkey has had some of the most considerable economic losses due to flooding and landslides as a percentage of GDP. Over the past 25 years, Turkey has experienced 25% of its natural disasters as landslides and 10% as floods respectively.
As per the G20 Climate Risk Atlas, overall precipitation is minimal in the islands but becomes more significant towards the Black Sea. In some years, heavy rains result in devastating floods and landslides. In other years, rising temperatures combined with declining precipitation produce severe water stress, especially in the south and west of the country. Therefore, according to the report, precipitation is projected to decrease.
The orography and proximity to the sea influence the temperature regime in Tukey, which fluctuates across time and space. Inland regions have the lowest temperatures, with a noticeable contrast between day and night. The western and southern shores are the warmest regions. Climate change is expected to be limited to +1.5°C between 2050 and 2100 under a low emissions scenario. But under a high emissions scenario, much greater temperature anomalies are expected by both 2050 and 2100.
Water availability is severely stressed, especially in the south and west of the country as a result of rising temperatures and falling precipitation. A substantial increase in demand, especially from farmers, will make the situation worse. In some basins, it is predicted that by 2030, approximately 20% of the surface water will have disappeared. The effects of climate change will also significantly impact the basins’ land use and land cover. Turkish shorelines are negatively impacted by coastal erosion and flooding, particularly in the Northern Aegean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central and Eastern Black Sea. As a result of the increased demand for water in the Mediterranean coastal regions, most coastal aquifers are now being invaded by seawater.
Expert Opinion on Recent Flood
Dr. Partha Jyoti Das, In-house Expert at Climate Fact Checks, evaluated the situation and concluded, “It is evident that the extreme rainfall that poured on both cities of Sanliurfa and Adiyaman in southeast Turkey was the main trigger of the flash floods. In one area of the Adiyaman province, 136mm of rainfall was precipitated in one 24-hour period; while in Sanliurfa, 111mm of rain was observed in two days, which was almost equal to one-third of the annual rainfall.”
“In general, any extreme rainfall event is considered an indication of climate change nowadays, and from this point of view, the Turkish flash floods that happened on 14-15th March 2023 this week also bear the signature of climate change,” he added.
How does urbanization escalate the situation?
According to Dr. Das, we can also look at this event as another example of pluvial urban flooding caused by climate change, where the loss and damage were high due to inadequate management and faulty urban development.
“The flood management infrastructure and strategies of these cities were not designed to cope with climatic extremes. Turkey has a recent history of catastrophic flash floods triggered by extreme rainfall. Severe weather was marked in the early parts of September 2009 that produced record-setting rainfall amounts across the Marmara region of Turkey and led to a series of flash floods which resulted in the death of 32 people and extensive damage to public property, infrastructure, and the environment besides jeopardizing people’s normal lives. It rained continuously for more than three days amounting to a total of more than 250 mm in some parts of the affected areas. The 24-hour rainfall amounts varied between 100 mm and 253 mm in most parts of the region. Scientists viewed that both topography of the region and the impact of climate change played an important role in enhancing rainfall,” he further explained.
He also pointed out how unplanned or non-sustainable urbanization could escalate the situation, “Experts who studied the floods concluded that besides climate change-induced extreme rains, the effects of inappropriate urban development were also largely responsible for the extensive loss and damage caused to the people, economy, environment, and infrastructure of the region. Rampant urbanization with large populations of internal migrants leading to very highly dense urban settlements, drastic land use changes, human occupation of flood plain and coastal zones, inadequate capacity of storm sewers, flood detention structures, and general drainage systems were all factors that aggravated the disastrous effects of the floods. Unabated concretization has increased the area of impervious land cover, which hinders infiltration of rains, and therefore more surface runoff is produced even from a moderate rainstorm. Such floods are called pluvial floods because the floods occur and intensify due to drainage failure”.
“This is a common characteristic of all large urban floods that have happened in recent times all over the world. Unscientific and unsustainable urban development multiplied the damage due to flooding, although extreme climatic events triggered most of these floods. For example, we can remember the recent events of large urban flooding in India, e.g., Hyderabad in 2000, Ahmedabad in 2001, Delhi in 2002 and 2003, Chennai in 2004, Mumbai in 2005, Surat in 2006, Kolkata in 2007, Jamshedpur in 2008, Delhi in 2009, Guwahati and Delhi in 2010, Hyderabad in 2020, Chennai in 2015 and Guwahati in 2014 and 2022; Kerala in 2018 and 2020,” he further added.
David. J.Edelman (2021) evaluated Istanbul’s urban planning. In his article, he pointed out, “Nearly 60% of the development is unplanned, unauthorized, low cost and incremental, and more than 60% of the present building stock is unsafe and low-quality”. A similar trend is followed in many parts of Turkey, making the regions more vulnerable to natural disasters. Apart from this, Huong et.al identified that urban flooding is linked to “(i) climate change-driven sea level rise, (ii) an expected increase of river runoff due to climate change, (iii) increased urban runoff driven by imperviousness, and (iv) enhancement of extreme rainfall due to urban growth-driven, microclimatic change (urban heat islands).”
Climate change and demographic changes are expected to have a significant impact on urban pluvial flood risk in the future. The former will probably result in an increase in the intensity and frequency of the extreme storm events that cause pluvial flooding, while the latter will result in an increase in exposure and risk.
“The learning from the recent urban floods, be it in India or elsewhere, is that flood risk management and water governance, in general, must be made climate resilient,” Dr. Das concluded.
We need to ensure that sustainable and nature-based solutions should be included in our urban planning to reduce future threats because flood events are unpredictable.
References:
https://quantectum.com/blog/natural-hazards-and-earthquakes-in-turkey/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264713/area-burned-by-wildfire-in-turkey/
https://mgm.gov.tr/FILES/genel/makale/44_Climate%20Change%20Projections%20for%20Turkey.pdf
https://files.cmcc.it/g20climaterisks/Turkey.pdf
https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/europe-and-central-asia/t%C3%BCrkiye
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flooding-and-climate-change-everything-you-need-know
https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/17/379/2013/hess-17-379-2013.html
