New Satellite images of Pakistan flood, before and after photos, massive destruction

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Created on Monday, 16 August 2010 00:00

Last Updated on Monday, 01 April 2013 14:46

Written by Khalid Shoaib AP2MKS

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Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 15:38

The first image is last year and that is how Pakistan looked, the satellite image of Pakistan this year the same time shows us just how flooded and the destruction the monsoons caused so far. According to weather reports in Pakistan all the destruction is not over yet since there are more rains coming. They are now about half way in the Monsoon season.

According to NASA:

Floodwaters continued rushing down the Indus River on August 10, 2010. High waters had traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), from the northern reaches of the country to Pakistan’s breadbasket in Punjab Province, and on to Sindh Province. In Sindh, two million people had already evacuated.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these images on August 10, 2010 (top), and almost exactly one year earlier, August 11, 2009 (bottom). The images show the lower Indus River, at the boundary of Punjab and Sindh Provinces. Both images use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between water and land. Water appears in varying shades of blue. Vegetation is green, and bare ground is pinkish brown. Clouds range in color from pale blue-green to bright turquoise.

In 2009, the Indus appears as a thin river—a braided stream north of Sukkur (where a barrage affects water flow), and a very skinny meandering waterway south of that city. In 2010, the river has completely filled the river valley, merging the braided streams north of Sukkur, and pushing water over riverbanks in places. Northwest of the river valley, around the city of Sibi, standing water is evident on what appears to be normally arid ground. Pools of water also appear due east of Sibi, on the other side of the river.

On August 10, 2010, the Indus River is less swollen south of Sukkur than it is north of the city, but even compared to an image acquired on August 8, water levels downstream from Sukkur appear higher. Early in the day on August 9, the recorded water flow through Sukkur Barrage was up to 1.4 million cubic feet per second (cusecs). The barrage is only designed to withstand a maximum of 900,000 cusecs.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated that the scale of destruction from Pakistan’s monsoon flooding in July and August of 2010 surpassed the devastation from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 northern Pakistan earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined.

Courtesy : fromtheold.com