Extent of Pakistan Floods Revealed from Space

The aftermath of the massive floods that affected Pakistan this summer are visible in this new image provided by the NASA Earth Observatory. The natural disasters – caused by extremely heavy monsoon rains – affected no less than 5.4 million people.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, some 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes, while more than 2.1 million acres of agricultural croplands have been damages for at least several years.

This image was acquired on October 6, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the NASA Terra satellite. It shows the extent of water masses in various shades of blue, vegetation in green, and ground in pink-beige.

Monsoon rains can sometimes get out of hand, due to important changes that take place in distant climate patters. The El Niño and La Niña events can, for example, influence the intensity of monsoons around the world.