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Pakistan is flooded, and folks are dying. Is it "global warming" or is it stupid irrigation techniques in Pakistan? Unlike most people, I don't have a clue what makes the weather do what it does. Or, I don't have an opinion. I do have an opinion about Muslims in Pakistan facing serious flooding, regardless of why it's raining.
It looks to me that the rain falls mainly in Pakistan and India as well. Why aren't the Indians dying from flooding? Same place, different political boundaries.
Maybe if the Pakistanis would spend less time, money, and brain-power on maintaining their jihad against India and the world generally they wouldn't have to go begging for money from-- not Saudi Arabia-- the West to help them save those at the mercy of nature. Well, we can forget that. Pakistanis have their priorities: jihad, war with India, sponging money from the West for military adventures against India and the West, and money for disaster relief. Now there is rain. Who'd have thought?
If Pakistanis irrigate and don't dredge the canals, then when the rains come down the river, they hit the sludge, the water finds a way around the stopper, and it goes on its merry way, killing those on previously dry ground. It ain't rocket science. But what do I know? Let's ask a real weather guy.
Jim Andrews
The International weather blog from AccuWeather.com is written by Jim Andrews who has more than 10 years experience forecasting outside the United States.
Pakistan Flood in More Detail
Aug 5, 2010; 10:22 AM ET
http://www.accuweather.com/FLOOD CREST POURING DOWN INDUS, CHENAB RIVERS
[....]MAJOR RIVERS SWELLED INTO FLOOD
Runoff from most of the far north and northwest of Pakistan is directly to the upper Indus River, which quickly began to burst its banks at the end of July.
[....]INDUS IS MUCH LIKE THE NILE
The Indus, like the longer and better known Nile, rises in highlands watered by seasonal, or monsoon, rains.
For much of its length, there is minimal inflow to the Indus, as it crosses what is essentially a desert. Or at least it would be were it not watered by the river's water through the industry of the people.
A good true-color satellite image would show clearly the green of lush croplands grounded in fertile alluvial soil. All this rich earth needs is dependable water and the farmer's care, and it can burst forth with green growth.
GEOGRAPHY SHAPES FLOOD THREAT
Fast-rising (in the geological sense of meaning) mountains, like those rimming the Indus Valley to the north and west, shed vast loads of sediment, which find their way downhill to streams and rivers on the way to the sea (in most instances).
When the main stream or tributaries reach flatlands, as does the Indus, the load of sediment can be too high for the streams to carry. When this happens, it chokes the stream beds and, over time, they tend "wander," thereby distributing the sand, silt and mud in a broad sheet. Much of Pakistan, as well as northern India, has such a landscape.
Satellite images of the Indus show a wide, meandering bed riven into untold channels, sandbars and islands. No doubt, any of these can shift markedly, and appear or disappear during a single flood.Sometimes, the lowest spots along the river's flood plain are not those followed by the river bed. This happenstance renders such spots exceptionally prone to inundation when such a river "reclaims" its rightful place on the flood plain during high water.
Crops and human habitation along rivers, and foremost desert rivers, are inevitably in harm's way during times of exceptional flow.
In the present instance, this accounts for the stated tragic loss of life (well above 1,000), number of displaced/affected people (3,000,000 or more), and land inundated (in the 100,000s of hectares) along the Indus River basin.
As I understand it, the top flow on the Indus (1,000,000 cusecs) is about 10 times the mean yearly flow of the river.
Unlike the Nile, the Indus does not have one great dam and flood control reservoir (as in the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser upstream of Egypt) to moderate flow in its lower reaches. The huge Tarbela Dam, north of Islamabad, is on the upper Indus, upstream of much of the runoff from this July's exceptional rainfall, and thus not a factor in controlling it.
LOW DAMS, FLOOD CONTROL AND IRRIGATION
Instead of major flood control dams, the mid- and lower reaches of the Indus are fitted with low dams, or "barrages." These work rather more to shunt water into supply canals than to have any direct moderating effect upon the flood crest.
At least in theory, the water supply canals can act to sluice away some of the flood flow, and this may be having a significant effect upon flow dynamics on the lndus at this time.
"Barrages" are, north to south, at Jinnah, Taunsa, Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri/Hyderabad. Having never been here myself, I must rely on other means to grasp this setting.
Satellite imagery shows that each of these structures has canals that split away right upstream. These canals then flow parallel to the river itself, their water being distributed to the croplands, towns and cities along the way.
While I have no actual statistics one way or another, it is my understanding that Karachi gets most of its water in this way.
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