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Floods in Pakistan

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Various newsoutlets report on floods in Pakistan (NYT 1, NYT2, globeandmail. About 800 people or more reportedly died. From a european perspective that seems quite a lot.

Nobody writes about why so many people died, or what the causes were: are there reservoirs? What was the estimated return period?

update Wednesday; August 4, 2010: There are reports that in Pakistan’s northwest, precipitation intensities were as high as 312mm within 36 hours.

update Saturday; August 14, 2010 NPR titles: “China, Pakistan Floods: Preventable Disasters?”

update Sunday; August 15, 2010 The Google Earth Blog has satellite images to be looked at in Google Earth showing the extent of the flood in Pakistan

update Tuesday; August 17, 2010:

  • Steven Solomon’s view as written in the NY Times. He points out that the crazy thing is that Pakistan actually has a fresh water shortage.
  • here’s a pretty impressive image from NASA (link to article; via Anne Jefferson @highlyanne )
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Extent of flood in Pakistan on August 17, 2010

update Friday; August 20, 2010:

Over at howbigreally.com, there is an awesome tool where you can center the overlay of the current extent of the floods in Pakistan over any other area in the world.

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Extent of current pakistan flood over central Europe

The CBC has a new article, stating that 4 million people are left homeless

updata Friday; November 19, 2010 … and Clinton says it’s climate change! Other people disagree Also the longer-term consequences are starting to emerge. I think especially worrisome is the question of what might happen to the food-situation next year?

Written by Claus

August 1st, 2010 at 8:56 am

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