Indonesia’s air force has seeded clouds with salt in an effort to stop rain from falling on the flooded capital, Jakarta. The seeding operation follows deadly flash floods and landslides that hit the capital after some of the heaviest rain ever recorded. Indonesian officials said that as of Friday, at least 43 people had been killed in the disaster. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced.

Cloud seeding is a process that involves shooting salt into clouds in an attempt to create artificial rain. It is often used in Indonesia to help put out forest fires. The current operation aims to get the clouds to drop water and break up before they reach Jakarta.

Indonesia’s air force teamed up with the country’s technology agency to carry out three rounds of cloud seeding on Friday. Officials said more cloud seeding would take place as needed.

The latest flooding followed heavy rainfall on December 31 and into the early hours of New Year’s Day. The water covered large areas of Jakarta and nearby towns. The start of 2020 weather was one of the most extreme rainfall events since record keeping began in 1866, Indonesia’s weather agency said on Friday. The officials said climate change had increased the risk of extreme weather. They warned that heavy rainfall could reach a high point in mid-January and should be expected to last until mid-February.

News videos showed floodwaters spreading across Jakarta. Images showed groups of people walking through water and mud-covered cars, some of them sitting on top of each other. President Joko Widodo blamed delays in flood control projects for the disaster. Among the projects is the building of a canal that has been delayed since 2017 because of property right issues.

Jakarta has been slowly sinking. A main cause is the amount of ground water being drawn out from under the city. Rising sea levels have made the threat of flooding even worse. Last year, Widodo announced he would move Indonesia’s capital to East Kalimantan province on Borneo island to reduce the burden on overpopulated Jakarta.

Floods are one of the most common disasters in the US. Some floods develop slowly. But flash floods   can develop quickly, sometimes in just a few minutes and without any signs of rain.【小题1】It carries rocks and can sweep away most things in its path.

If a flood is likely in your area, you should:

Listen to the radio or watch television for information. If there is any possibility of a flash flood, move at once to higher ground.【小题2】

If you have time to prepare, you should:

Make your home safe by bringing in outdoor furniture. Move necessary items to an upper floor. 【小题3】Do not touch any electrical equipment if you are wet or standing in water.

If you have to leave your home right away, remember these tips:

Do not walk through moving water.【小题4】If you have to walk in water, walk where the water is not moving. Use a stick to check the ground in front of you.

【小题5】 If flood-waters rise around your car, give up the car and move to higher ground if you can do so safely. Otherwise you and the car can be quickly swept away.

Australia is no stranger to wildfires. The country’s weather patterns create heat and dryness, which fuel occasional bushfires in a natural cycle. However, one that started last September continues to burn, and it may not be natural at all. Scientists say that man-made climate change has played a role in the fire’s creation and duration.

Peter Gleick, a US climate scientist, told Time, “the extent, the severity, and the intensity of these fires wouldn’t have been so bad without the fingerprints of climate change.”

According to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, the country’s temperatures have risen by more than one degree Celsius since 1920. The spring of 2019 was Australia’s driest in 120 years. In December, the country saw its hottest day ever, with an average temperature of 41.9℃.

“Due to enhanced (过度的) evaporation（蒸发）in warmer temperatures, the vegetation and the soils dry out more quickly,” Stefan Rahmstorf, a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, told Time.

Worse still, researchers at the UK Bureau of Meteorology believe that wildfires like this might become “normal conditions” in the future, according to the BBC. They looked at 57 research papers published since 2013, which examined the relationship between climate change and the risk of wildfires. They found that the link between the two has already been observed in many parts of the world, including the western US, Canada, southern Europe, and even Scandinavia and Siberia.

“These are impacts we are seeing for one degree of global climate change. The impact will get worse if we don’t do what it takes to make the world’s climate stable,” Corinne Le Quere, a professor from the University of East Anglia in the UK, told the BBC. “What we are seeing in Australia is not the ‘new normal’. It’s a transition(过渡)to worse impacts.”