Devastating Floods In Pakistan
August 24, 2010
The flood situation in Pakistan is getting bad to worse day by day and the image above shows what is left behind in most parts of north-western Pakistan, broken homes, lost lives, livelihood, spread of diseases, lack of basic amenities and total chaos. It’s one of the worst flood disaster that has happened in recent times, caused due to incessant month long monsoon rains. Currently 1/5th of Pakistan is under floods and it can get even worse in coming days.Blame it on Global warming or anything else, but the event is bizarre and has costed lives of so many people. While this single isolated event can’t be taken as proof of Global warming, but if you take into accounts all the climate extremities we have been observing in recent time, freezing cold winters, extreme hot and prolonged summers, prolonged rains such as these and earlier in other parts of India– it all points towards global warming as one of its cause. Indian Ocean has warmed up by 2 degree F since 1970. Warm oceans means more evaporation of water, it also heats up the air making it capable of holding more moisture: results- air can contain more moisture which then move into land where they trigger storms and bizarre rainfall patterns.
These images above shows the situation in Pakistan before and after the floods. The picture above was taken in 2009, while picture below was taken by satellite on Aug 19, 2010. Swollen Indus river can be clearly seen and the water is heading towards Kotri barrage before it flows into the sea. Barrage is still holding the water, but the level is rising and if it does overflow, it will wreak havoc in the city of Hyderabad with a population of more than 1.5 million people.
Picture credit: Boston.com/Bigpicture/AP photo
Satellite Image and info : NASA/ESO
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Filed under: Environment,News
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