Dozens Dead or Injured in Pakistan Dust Storms

Major dust storms sweep Pakistani cities killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 60

Powerful dust storms struck multiple cities in Pakistan including Lahore, Faisalabad, Quetta and Peshawar, leaving at least 15 people dead and more than 60 injured.

The dust storms hit the country amid a severe heatwave which had persisted for the 8 days. “On Tuesday, Lahore and Noor Pur Thal remained the hottest places in the province where mercury rose as high as 45 degree Celsius. The minimum temperature in Lahore was recorded at 30 C,” said a report.

Other Global Disasters, Significant Events

• China. Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is now a ‘serious epidemic’ in China At least a million Chinese develop TB each year, researchers say, of which 110,000 get a strain that’s resistant to the mainstay drugs isoniazid and rifampin.
  • According to a  new survey, more than 8,200 Chinese contract extensively resistant or XDR-TB, most of which are incurable.

Under a high magnification of 1,5549x, this colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted some of the ultrastructural details seen in the cell wall configuration of a number of Gram-positive Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. As an obligate aerobic organism M. tuberculosis can only survive in an environment containing oxygen. This bacterium ranges in length between 2 – 4 microns, and a width between 0.2 – 0.5 microns. See PHIL 8438 for a black and white version of this image. TB bacteria become active, and begin to multiply, if the immune system can’t stop them from growing. The bacteria attack the body and destroy tissue. If in the lungs, the bacteria can actually create a hole in the lung tissue. Some people develop active TB disease soon after becoming infected, before their immune system can fight off the bacteria. Other people may get sick later, when their immune system becomes weak for another reason. Babies and young children often have weak immune systems. People infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, have very weak immune systems. Other people can have weak immune systems, too, especially people with any of these conditions: substance abuse; diabetes mellitus; silicosis; cancer of the head or neck; leukemia or Hodgkin’s disease; severe kidney disease; low body weight; certain medical treatments (such as corticosteroid treatment or organ transplants); specialized treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, or Crohn’s disease. Caption: CDC/ Dr. Ray Butler. Photo: Janice Haney Carr

Global Disasters: Links, Forecasts and Background

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Back to the Primordial Future
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs
• Mass Die-offs

• 2010 Disasters [Links to 2010 Disaster Calendar]
• Mega Disasters
• 2011 Disaster Calendar
• 2012 Disaster Calendar

TC Phet, SST and Intercontinental Dust Storms

Tropical Cyclone Phet Could Reorganize Rapidly after Leaving Oman

Cyclone Phet, Water Vapor Image (4-km res). Source: CIMSS – Click images to enlarge.

Cyclone Phet, Visible/ IR Image (2-km res). Source: CIMSS – Click images to enlarge.

Sea Surface Temperatures Warm Enough for Busy 2010 Hurricane Season

A color-coded image from Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite shows sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Atlantic Ocean and part of the Pacific Ocean. Source: NASA E/O

Saharan Dust Blown Across the Atlantic

Photo-like satellite image taken by MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite during successive orbits and stitched together on June 1, 2010, shows a Saharan dust plume approaching the northeast coast of South America, about 8,000km away.  “Each year, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere winter, storms like the one pictured here deliver about 40 million tons of dust from the Sahara to the Amazon River Basin.” Source: NASA E/O

More Droughts in 2009

Argentina’s 2009 crop production was 40-70 lower than in 2008, depending on the crop

Drought in Argentina

NASA Earth Observatory Image: acquired February 23, 2009

NASA Earth Observatory Image: acquired February 22, 2008

USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) reported a severe drought in southern South America, which had severely affected corn, cotton, and soybean crops in Argentina. Total rainfall since December was far below normal in most areas, and the rain that did fall often did not coincide with key points in crops’ growing cycles. Dust storms occurred in January and again in February, despite some late-to-arrive rains.

[NOTE: Dust storms destroy topsoil and accelerate land erosion. According to estimates made by our colleagues at EDRO, by 2012 critically low levels of top soil will have been reached at which point significant crop failures would occur worldwide.]

This pair of natural-color (photo-like) images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite contrasts 2009 conditions (top) in southern Buenos Aires province with the conditions in 2008 (bottom), a more normal year. The province is one of the country’s major corn-growing areas. The difference in overall greenness is dramatic. In 2008, the area was a checkerboard of lush green, a sign that crops were healthy. In the 2009 image, the landscape was pale green and tan, reflecting the struggle that natural and cultivated vegetation was having with the hot, dry summer.

FAS analyst Denise McWilliams said 2009 crop production was 30-60 percent of what it was in 2008, depending on the crop. Drought stress made the corn crop susceptible to insect pests, and in some fields, farmers simply baled the stunted corn crop for use as livestock forage. Likewise, extreme heat and drought struck the season’s first soybean crop during its flowering and seed pod development phase. Meanwhile, the drought and heat caused wide differences in the height and maturity level of cotton crops, even within the same field, which was expected to complicate the harvest.

References:

• USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Office of Global Analysis. (2009, February). World Agricultural Production. (pdf) Accessed February 23, 2009.

NASA images by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey [with minor editions made by FEWW], with input provided Denise McWilliams, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.

Instrument:  Terra – MODIS

Related Links:

• Index of Human Impact on Nature
• Topsoil
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• Food Crisis
• Drought and Deluge
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities