Dan Kulpinski

Cyclone Nargis decimated part of Myanmar from May 2-4, its huge rains and storm surge flooding the Irrawaddy River delta, killing at least 22,000 people and leaving twice as many missing as of this writing.

Some estimate the death toll could eventually reach 100,000. About 1.5 million survivors are in need of aid.

These two images from NASA’s Terra satellite show before (image above) and after (image below) views, with the flooding visible in the second image. The cyclone dumped up to 2 feet of rain in some areas and pushed ashore a storm surge up to 12 feet tall, which traveled inland some 25 miles.

An excellent story from the Associated Press explains why this cyclone was so deadly. Some of the reasons include: It was a very strong storm, a borderline Category 3/4 when it hit land; that land in the river delta is right at sea level, making it vulnerable to storm surges; the Myanmar government does not have radar to predict the size of a storm surge; the population of that coastal and river delta area has grown in recent years; and the mangrove forests, which used to provide a kind of buffer from the sea and storm surges, have been thinned out and cut down for shrimp farms and rice paddies, leaving the growing population a bit less protected. In addition, the government apparently did not warn people about the possible storm surge and did not organize evacuations.

Myanmar gets hit by cyclones once every 40 years, on average — a fact this article said may have contributed to their lack of preparedness. Indeed, Nargis took an unusual track for a cyclone in that region; one expert said it was a once-every-500-years event. It was the first cyclone known to have hit the delta.

The loss of life is sad and tragic and one can only hope the Myanmar government allows aid into the country quickly and distributes it quickly.

It seems the big media outlets have learned not to immediately try to link storms like this to climate change, which is good. You can’t link any one weather event to climate change with any certainty. As this story from Agence France Press points out, by quoting a French scientist, it’s only in the long term that you can look back and see if specific events were part of a wider trend. The AP story also notes that there’s not a long enough data record on Indian Ocean cyclones to identify any effects of warming.

However, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports noted that tropical cyclones are “likely” to become more intense by 2100 and have higher winds and more rain. The AFP story notes that the report also points out that human population growth in coastal regions has increased the toll of these storms.

Back to those mangrove forests: The slicing up or removal of a buffer like this harks back to New Orleans’ wetlands, which were shredded by industrial development in the decades before Hurricane Katrina. Those Swiss-cheese wetlands allowed the Katrina storm surge to move farther inland and reach greater heights, causing much of the flooding there. In both cases one lesson is that removing natural buffers can have consequences, although I wonder how much the mangroves would have softened the blow from Nargis.

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Want to help?
Many organizations are sending and pledging aid to Myanmar. The Web site Network for Good has compiled a list of them and allows you to donate to each group through the Network for Good site.