London: With Hurricane Harvey gathering headlines as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in half a century, floods have killed many more people in Africa and Asia this year, as climate change worsens extreme weather worldwide.

Here are some floods you might have missed:

Asia

Floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal have killed more than 1200 people and affected 40 million, and are likely to intensify as monsoon rains continue, aid agencies say.

All three countries suffer frequent flooding during the June-September monsoon season, but aid agencies say things are worse this year with thousands of villages cut off and people deprived of food and clean water for days.

Tens of thousands of houses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed as humanitarians prepare for more deaths, hunger and water-borne diseases.

"These are some of the worst floods we've seen in South Asia in decades and the impact is likely only going to get worse," Madara Hettiarachchi, Christian Aid's humanitarian head in Asia, said in a statement.

"Farms and livestock have been washed away so food security is going to be a huge problem."

The worst floods in a decade struck Nepal, killing 150 people and destroying 90,000 homes.

Monsoon floods submerged more than a third of low-lying, densely populated Bangladesh, causing more than 130 deaths and widespread crop damage.

Last week, Hong Kong and Macau were lashed by typhoon Hato. The force-10 typhoon was the strongest to strike Hong Kong in five years. In Macau, it killed at least eight people and left a trail of destruction.

The latest disaster zone is Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, where overnight floods killed at least a dozen people, officials said on Thursday.

Africa

Widespread flooding has killed at least 40 people in Niger since the rainy season began in June, leaving thousands homeless, without cattle or crops.

Aid agencies are increasingly worried about water-borne diseases like cholera as the waters are not expected to subside until rains end in September.

A mudslide in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, on August 14 killed about 500 people after heavy rains, with hundreds still missing.

Sporadic downpours continue, flooding parts of the coastal city and washing away more mud containing human remains.

Heavy rainfall also sparked a landslide at a rubbish dump in Conakry, the capital of neighbouring Guinea, last week, killing 10 people, while at least 200 people are thought to have died in another slide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Heavy rains also destroyed more than 100 houses in Sudan last week.

Middle East

At least 18 people were killed in Yemen in flooding caused by heavy rains, the government-run news agency Saba reported on Wednesday.

Aid organisations say the rains could exacerbate Yemen's cholera epidemic, which has infected more than half a million people and killed nearly 2000 since April.

In Iran, at least 12 people were killed by flash floods that started on August 14, the Iranian Red Crescent reported.

Europe

A landslide in Switzerland left several people missing when it struck a remote village near the Italian border last week, at the same time there were flashfloods in Crimea, UK and Ireland, while in Italy flashfloods and landslides killed at least one person in Veneto in early August, a few days after people were forced to evacuate parts of northern Germany after heavy rains caused several rivers to overflow.

Central and South America

In Brazil, record winter rains and floods displaced more than 2600 people in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in late May, two days after floods and landslides killed seven people and rendered 40,000 homeless in the northern states of Pernambuco and Alagoas. Some areas recorded almost 250 mm of rain in a 24 hour period, according to Floodlist, an European Union-backed flood observer. 

Heavy rains and landslides also left at least 17 people dead and affected thousands of others in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala in June.

New Zealand

Closer to home, record rains saw New Zealand receive four times the average rainfall of July in one day. The country was hit by "the worst storm in 50 years" when Cyclone Cook roared into the Bay of Plenty in April.

Reuters