Sunni fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took over Iraq’s largest hydroelectric dam last Sunday, along with three towns and an oilfield according to the commander of the Peshmerga Kurdish fighters who had been defending the facility. Facing minimal opposition, ISIS seized control of Mosul Dam after a 24-hour battle. Workers remain […]
Holoscenes is a public art and performance installation that is a visual response to climate change. It’s centered around three people-sized aquariums that flood and drain and re-flood using powerful hydraulics that move 12 tons of water per minute.
Just when the weather was cooling down in the Middle East a little, we get woke up again with the usual alarm and this time from a United Nations panel: humankind is to blame for global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in a new report just out.
Recently launched by Qatar’s Al Jazeera Media Network, Al Jazeera America has already made a splash for its no-nonsense climate change coverage – something local media stations have been too timid to tackle.
Imagine the famous pyramids under water? Alexandria, Egypt holds top risk, followed by Istanbul, Turkey. Think “Mediterranean” and most Westerners conjure up Monte Carlo or Mykonos, Cannes or Nice, often overlooking the southern coastline cities that lie in Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Fourteen Mediterranean port cities are at risk of extreme and […]
What the Middle East will look like with a 9 meter raise. Play God with the online map to see what we’ll lose. When you click around NASA’s online flood maps you can instantly view impacts on the world’s coastal communities. A single meter increase soaks Alexandria and Basra, and rattles the nerves of eastern Saudi […]
The Malacca Straits Mosque in Malaysia is arguably the world’s most beautiful and it is vulnerable to rising seas. Malaysia is one of the few countries that share Dubai’s obsession with manmade islands and grandeur. We have often cast a critical eye on the Emirate’s core developers for building artificial islands that have wrecked havoc […]
Due to the threat of flooding, communities in low-lying valleys in Oman are being encouraged to relocate It may be a hot and dry country most of the year but Oman, like Saudi Arabia, is prone to flash flooding. In November 2011, around 14 people were reported to have been killed and more than 200 […]
1,000 cars have been donated by the Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation to the recent Jeddah flood victims Heavy rainfall in Jeddah in Saudi this January led to the deaths of a reported four people and left hundreds more families stranded and distraught as they dealt with the flood. Although the floods in 2010 did not […]
Increased flooding and temperatures could increase our exposure to chemicals kept in check according to the terms of the Stockholm Treaty. In 2004, the Stockholm Treaty was established to manage exposure to 21 dangerous chemicals. The Jerusalem Post reports that a recently-published United Nations document shows that climate change could undermine the ability of 172 […]