Rainfall that was 10 times heavier than normal has caused devastating floods in Pakistan, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday as it released satellite images of a huge lake created by the overflowing Indus River. The rains, described by UN chief Antonio Guterres as a "monsoon on steroids", have killed hundreds since June and unleashed severe flooding that washed away rows of vital crops and damaged or destroyed more than a million homes. Data from the EU's Copernicus satellite was used to map the extent of the flood from space to help rescue efforts, ESA said in a statement. "Heavy monsoon rainfall - 10 times heavier than usual - since mid-June has left more than a third of the country now under water," it said.
The agency released satellite images showing the area where the Indus River has overflowed "effectively, creating a long lake tens of kilometers wide" between the towns of Dera Murad Jamali and Larkana. Officials say more than 33 million people - one in seven Pakistanis - are affected and reconstruction work will cost more than $10 billion. Guterres called the floods a "climate disaster" and launched an appeal for $160 million in emergency funding. While it is too early to quantify the contribution of global warming to the floods, scientists say the rains are broadly consistent with expectations that climate change will make India's monsoon wetter. A recent study based on climate models predicted that exceptionally wet monsoons in the Indian subcontinent will become six times more likely during the 21st century, even if humanity reduces carbon emissions.