NASA’s Terra satellite captures startling before and after pictures of the coast of Burma
Tropical Cyclone Nargis slammed the Burmese coast with 130 mph winds and bursts of up to 160 mph—the equivalent of a category 3 or low-level category 4 hurricane. It reportedly led to thousands of deaths, and as of Monday, thousands more were missing. Now NASA has released a set of images that show how drastically the flooding has drenched Burma’s coast.
The Terra satellite used its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer to capture both the visible and infrared sections of the spectrum, which enabled it to produce pictures that highlight the coverage of the floods. The white streaks in the second image are clouds. Try to ignore those and it’s incredibly clear just how much the surrounding waters have encroached on the land. And these aren’t empty lands. There are several big cities in the region. An area known as Yangon, which has a population of 4 million people, has been surrounded by water.
The devastation has also renewed a fiery debate about the link between climate change and storm intensity.
More images here.
Via NASA
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- Tags: Burma, Climate Change, Cyclones, Flooding, Hurricanes, Strom, Tropical Storms
MIT professor Kerry Emanuel tries to correct the misinterpretations of his latest research
MIT meteorologist Kerry Emanuel got a ton of attention in 2005 when he published a paper in Nature demonstrating a link between global warming and hurricanes—especially since Katrina hit New Orleans just three weeks later.
Now Emanuel has published another major paper on the subject, and the media interpretations of his results are all over the place. The first paper was historical, whereas the new one, which hinges on computer models, covers the past but also projects patterns forward into the future. The work isn’t as clear-cut as the first study, hence the rampant misinterpretations.
In a Q&A with MIT News, Emanuel explains it in his own words. No sound bites.
Researchers find that listening for storms underwater can help them predict intensity
MIT researchers have proposed a strange new way to predict the severity of a hurricane: Listening underwater. Currently, the most common way to gauge a storm’s strength is to either study satellite images (which can be pretty inaccurate), or fly a weather plane straight on into the storm and gather critical data (which gets expensive).
But this new technique, reported in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, involves the use of underwater microphones, or hydrophones. Previously, the group proposed the link between the intensity of sound underwater and the strength of a storm rushing by overhead. Now, using data gathered by a NOAA hydrophone sitting nearly a half mile below the surface during a 1999 hurricane, they have shown that the correlation is real.
In the long run, if the link holds up, the group would like to see hydrophones placed in known hurricane hotspots.
Via NYTimes
