Heavy rains pushed the Mekong River in Cambodia over its banks during the weekend, flooding 37 villages and damaging over 5,000 homes. Schools also were closed, and rice and cassava crops have been badly affected.
Taking a global view, public health issues and the environment are intimately linked. As an example, research has demonstrated that cholera epidemics occur seasonally in Bangladesh, with peak outbreaks happening twice a year. This bimodal outbreak pattern closely follows the times when large monsoon events are frequent (spring and fall). While these patterns are known, this knowledge alone cannot predict the severity and location of cholera outbreaks until a monsoon event occurs, or an outbreak is reported. Therefore, there can only be reactive responses to cholera outbreaks.
Water isn't the only thing pouring over Niagara Falls. Pollution from fires in Ontario, Canada is also making the one thousand mile trip, while being measured by NASA's Aqua satellite. One instrument that flies aboard two of NASA's satellites has provided two views of the pollution from the fires in Ontario. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument, flies onboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. MODIS has provided a visible look at the smoke and pollution that has spread over Niagara Falls and east to Nova Scotia.
By July 2011, Texas and New Mexico had completed the driest six-month period on record. Average rain between January and June was more than eight inches (203 millimeters) below average in Texas and 3.5 inches (89 millimeters) below average in New Mexico. Record warm temperatures also persisted in Texas between April and June. The lack of rain and the warm temperatures added up to exceptional drought.
Ordinarily, the flashes of white in South America’s Atacama Desert rise from salt pans.But on July 7, 2011, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired these images, the white came from a far rarer commodity: snow. Starting on July 3 and lasting several days, a cold front dumped up to 80 centimeters of snow (32 inches) on the driest desert in the world, reported BBC News.
The eruption at Chile’s Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex sent clouds of ash high into the atmosphere, above the weather that usually breaks up such plumes. The CALIPSO satellite recorded the plume 15 kilometers (50,000 feet) above the Earth on the second day of the eruption, and the volcano continues to push ash into the atmosphere. At these high altitudes, the ash entered the jetstream and blew quickly eastward.
On May 16, 2011, tan and gray smoke spread hundreds of kilometers across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories in Canada. At 10:00 a.m., the Alberta government reported 116 fires burning in the province, 34 of them out of control. The following day, the total number of fires had dropped to 100, and the number of uncontrolled fires had dropped to 22. But four new fires had started to burn out of control.
Typhoon Morakot bore down on the island of Taiwan on August 7, 2009. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 1:25 p.m. local time (5:25 UTC), the center of the storm was just beginning to reach the shoreline. Morakot was a Category 2 storm with winds of about 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour or 85 knots) and was moving slowly northwest over Taiwan.
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