A plane flying over Ramlet al-Baida beach, in Beirut, on Oct. 13, 2022. (Credit: Matthieu Karam)
Léa sits paralyzed behind the wheel. On the highway leading to Dbayeh, in the middle of the night, the 20-year-old girl is stuck in her car. The reason: water. The road is flooded, the water is seeping through the roof and doors of her car, which will no longer start. The cause of the flood: hourslong heavy rainfall. “I was shaking in fear,” she recalls.Léa was quick to insult the Lebanese state and its poor road infrastructure. But that was not the only reason for her predicament. The extreme weather conditions in the eastern Mediterranean are becoming more frequent and symptomatic of climate change. The region is increasingly prone to droughts, extreme heat waves and bad weather.Between 1981 and 2019, the Mediterranean basin warmed almost twice as quickly as the global average, according to a new study published by Reviews of...
Léa sits paralyzed behind the wheel. On the highway leading to Dbayeh, in the middle of the night, the 20-year-old girl is stuck in her car. The reason: water. The road is flooded, the water is seeping through the roof and doors of her car, which will no longer start. The cause of the flood: hourslong heavy rainfall. “I was shaking in fear,” she recalls.Léa was quick to insult the Lebanese state and its poor road infrastructure. But that was not the only reason for her predicament. The extreme weather conditions in the eastern Mediterranean are becoming more frequent and symptomatic of climate change. The region is increasingly prone to droughts, extreme heat waves and bad weather.Between 1981 and 2019, the Mediterranean basin warmed almost twice as quickly as the global average, according to a new study published by Reviews of...