Underneath Tokyo, a 6.5-kilometer tunnel system redirects floodwaters outside of the city. But increasing levels of rainfall due to climate change threaten to inundate the system and city officials are working on a major upgrade.
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00:00Deep beneath the streets of Tokyo sits this cavernous cathedral.
00:05It has 59 pillars, each weighing 500 tons and stretching 18 meters tall,
00:11creating a chamber large enough to hold nearly 100 Olympic-sized pools of water.
00:17It's part of an intricate system of dams, levees and tunnels,
00:21protecting the city of 37 million people from floods
00:25by redirecting floodwaters out of the city.
00:29But Tokyo is seeing more downpours than ever before,
00:33and its flood prevention system may no longer be enough.
00:37There is a long-term trend of global warming,
00:41so it is expected that the temperature will continue to rise,
00:45and that stronger rains will continue to fall,
00:48and that record-breaking rains will continue to fall.
01:06This year, Tokyo's flood system kicked in four times in June alone,
01:30more than all of 2020-23.
01:33And as Typhoon Shanshan hit Japan in August,
01:36the tunnels redirected enough water to fill the Tokyo Dome Stadium
01:40almost four times over.
01:42With unprecedented levels of rainfall hitting Tokyo,
02:05the city's flood system has to keep up
02:08to keep rainwaters out of people's homes and flowing safely away.
02:13Hank Hsu and Harrell Hughes for Taiwan Plus.