Hallo eco-aware viewers and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Today in the first of a two-part series, we focus on the devastating effects of floods on people and our planet. Floods occur when enormous amounts of water partially or fully inundate land surfaces through such events as excessively heavy rainfalls, cyclones,
tsunamis, storm surges, icesheet and glacier melting, and so on.

Experiencing a serious flood can be a truly terrifying experience, as conditions are ever-changing and uncertain.  Is it safe to drive through a flooded street? Can one walk through the high waters and not encounter dangerous sharp objects or worse, lose footing and be swept away by the swift currents?
Will people be able to survive the time without access to clean water and food?

In its numerous reports, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has observed that around the world there have been widespread increases in heavy rainfall events, even in places where the total amount of rain received annually has been decreasing.

Prominent scientists everywhere point to global warming as the reason for this worrisome phenomenon. Climate change researchers have found that animal agriculture is overwhelmingly responsible for the warming of our planet.

This harmful activity releases immense quantities of lethal greenhouse gases and the industry is also the primary cause of the majority of the world’s deforestation and land degradation.   

The alterations to the planet’s atmosphere and land surfaces from livestock raising have wreaked havoc on the natural interactions between ecosystems and the hydrological cycle. Climate models cited in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports project that deleterious human actions such as factory farming which elevate the amount of greenhouse gases in the air will mean a continual upward trend in the number of violent weather events in many parts of the world, including those marked by excessively heavy precipitation. 

Rising sea levels caused by climate change worsen the effect of storm surges and other similar weather extremes in coastal areas by increasing the chances that an inundation will occur.