Aug 15, 2021 - Science

Heavy rains trigger deadly mudslides and flooding in Japan

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The site of a landslide caused by heavy rain in Kanzaki City, Saga Prefecture on August 15 — The site of a landslide caused by heavy rain in Kanzaki City, Saga Prefecture, Japan, on Sunday. Photo: STR/JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images

Heavy rains across Japan triggered a mudslide and flooding on Sunday, as almost 2 million people were under evacuation orders, per the BBC.

Details: Rescuers found three of the eight people the mudslide had buried in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano on Sunday, but three others were presumed dead, AP reports.

Mudslides on Friday left at least one person dead in Nagasaki and another person in Hiroshima seriously wounded.

The big picture: A 2020 report from the Japanese government found that the country averaged as many as 1,500 landslides annually over the previous decade, almost a 50% increase from the 10 years preceding it.

Researchers have found climate change is "intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water," the Guardian notes.
A sweeping report published last week by the UN's IPCC concludes: "Human influence on the climate system is now an established fact."

Go deeper: UN report: Effects of climate change even more severe than we thought

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Heavy rains trigger deadly mudslides and flooding in Japan

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