Is global warming to blame for Burma cyclone?
Pastor Dale Morgan
Is global warming to blame for Burma cyclone?*
By Michael Casey, AP Environmental Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand — It was Asia's answer to Hurricane Katrina. Packing
winds upwards of 120 mph, Cyclone Nargis became one of Asia's deadliest
storms by hitting land at one of the lowest points in Myanmar and
setting off a storm surge that reached 25 miles inland.
"When we saw the (storm) track, I said, 'Uh oh, this is not going to be
good," said Mark Lander, a meteorology professor at the University of
Guam. "It would create a big storm surge. It was like Katrina going into
New Orleans."
Forecasters began tracking the cyclone April 28 as it first headed
toward India. As projected, it took a sharp turn eastward, but didn't
follow the typical cyclone track in that area leading to Bangladesh or
Myanmar's mountainous northwest.
Instead, it swept into the low-lying Irrawaddy delta in central Myanmar.
The result was the worst disaster ever in the impoverished country.
It was the first time such an intense storm hit the delta, said Jeff
Masters, co-founder and director of meteorology at the San
Francisco-based Weather Underground. He called it "one of those
once-in-every-500-years kind of things."
"The easterly component of the path is unusual," Masters said. "It
tracked right over the most vulnerable part of the country, where most
of the people live."
When the storm made landfall early Saturday at the mouth of the
Irrawaddy River, its battering winds pushed a wall of water as high as
12 feet some 25 miles inland, laying waste to villages and killing tens
of thousands.
Most of the dead were in the delta, where farm families sleeping in
flimsy shacks barely above sea level were swept to their deaths. Almost
95% of the houses and other buildings in seven townships were destroyed,
Myanmar's government says. U.N. officials estimate 1.5 million people
were left in severe straits.
"When you look at the satellite picture of before and after the storm
the effects look eerily similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in how it
inundated low-lying areas," said Ken Reeves, director of forecasting for
AccuWeather.com.
The Irrawaddy delta "is huge and the interaction of water and land lying
right at sea level allowed the tidal surge to deliver maximum
penetration of sea water over land," Reeves said. "Storms like this do
most of their killing through floods, with salt water being even more
dangerous than fresh water."
The delta had lost most of its mangrove forests along the coast to
shrimp farms and rice paddies over the past decade. That removed what
scientists say is one of nature's best defenses against violent storms.
"If you look at the path of the (cyclone) that hit Myanmar, it hit
exactly where it was going to do the most damage, and it's doing the
most damage because much of the protective vegetation was cleared," said
Jeff NcNeely, chief scientist for the International Union for
Conservation of Nature.
"It's an expensive lesson, but it has been one taught repeatedly," he
said. "You just wonder why governments don't get on this."
Some environmentalists suggested global warming may have played a role.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that
warming oceans could contribute to increasingly severe cyclones with
stronger winds and heavier rains.
"While we can never pinpoint one disaster as the result of climate
change, there is enough scientific evidence that climate change will
lead to intensification of tropical cyclones," said Sunita Narain,
director of the Indian environmental group Center for Science and
Environment.
"Nargis is a sign of things to come," she said. "The victims of these
cyclones are climate change victims and their plight should remind the
rich world that it is doing too little to contain its greenhouse gas
emissions."
Weather experts, however, are divided over whether global warming is a
factor in catastrophic storms. At a January conference of the American
Meteorological Society, some postulated warmer ocean temperatures may
actually reduce the strength of cyclones and hurricanes.
Masters, at Weather Underground, said Wednesday that in the case of
Nargis, the meteorological data in the Indian Ocean region "is too short
and too poor in quality to make judgments about whether tropical
cyclones have been affected by global warming."
Despite assertions by Myanmar's military government that it warned
people about the storm, critics contend the junta didn't do enough to
alert the delta and failed to organize any evacuations, saying that made
the death toll worse.
"Villagers were totally unaware," said 38-year-old Khin Khin Myawe,
interviewed in the hard-hit delta town of Labutta. "We knew the cyclone
was coming but only because the wind was very strong. No local
authorities ever came to us with information about how serious the storm
was."
The India Meteorological Department, one of six regional warning centers
set up by the World Meteorological Organization, began sending regular
storm advisories April 27. The information appeared in Myanmar's
state-run newspapers, radio and television 48 hours ahead of the storm.
But the international advisories said nothing about a storm surge. And
Myanmar, unlike its neighbors Bangladesh and India, has no radar network
to help predict the location and height of surges, the WMO said.
There also wasn't any coordinated effort on the part of the junta to
move people out of low-lying areas, even though information was
available about the expected time and location of landfall.
"How is it possible that there was such a great death toll in the 21st
century when we have imagery from satellites in real time and there are
specialized meteorology centers in all the regions?" said Olavo
Rasquinho of the U.N. Typhoon Committee Secretariat.
Bangladesh has a storm protection system that includes warning sirens,
evacuation routes and sturdy towers to shelter people, measures that
were credited with limiting the death toll from last year's Cyclone Sidr
to 3,100.
Atiq A. Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced
Studies and a disaster specialist, said Myanmar's death toll would have
been lower if it had such a system.
"Taking some action to move people from affected areas would have
dramatically helped reduce the numbers of causalities. Absolutely,"
Rahman said.
But junta officials and some weather experts said evacuating a large
area with millions of residents would have been nearly impossible, given
the poor roads, the distance to some villages and the likely refusal of
some families to leave.
"Even if they warned them, they can't go anywhere. Or they are afraid to
go anywhere because they are afraid of losing their property," said
Lander, the University of Guam professor. "It is debatable how much of a
mass exodus you could have had."
Contributing: Associated Press writer Lily Hindy contributed to this
report.