Tag Archives: cyclones

Madagascar: ‘Overwhelming’ destruction, surging needs after back-to-back cyclones – WFP

Posted on by
Reply

Speaking to reporters from Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo, WFP Country Director Tania Goossens said some 400,000 people are facing acute humanitarian needs after the island was hit by back-to-back cyclones in the space of three weeks.

Ms. Goossens recently returned from a mission to the port city Toamasina (also known as Tamatave), the country’s second largest urban centre, where Gezani made landfall on Tuesday evening with wind gusts of up to 250 kilometres per hour.

“The scale of the destruction is really overwhelming,” Ms. Goossens insisted.

Nearly 40 deaths

She said that according to the authorities, 80 per cent of the city has suffered damage and that it is “running on roughly five per cent electricity at the moment.”

“There’s no water and one of WFP’s warehouses and our office was also completely destroyed during the cyclone,” she added.

Assessments are ongoing but to date the authorities report 38 deaths and 374 people injured.

Families left with nothing

The UN food agency official said that many families have left their homes and that there was “severe” damage to buildings, businesses, schools and the city’s hospital.

“During my visit, I saw families trying to recover the little that was left of their home,” she recounted. “Many are spending the night in homes where the roofs have been torn off.”

Uprooted trees and debris across the city are blocking streets, Ms. Goossens said, and fuel is difficult to come by.

“Families are telling us that they have lost everything,” she stressed. “Many are sheltering in damaged homes or temporary sites and uncertain about how they can access their next meal.”

Rising needs

In addition to the urgent need for food Ms. Goossens highlighted humanitarians’ concerns about water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, as a lack of clean water and damaged infrastructure raise the risk of disease outbreaks.

She also mentioned “rising protection concerns for vulnerable groups” such as women, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities.

Mobilising support

In anticipation of the shock WFP and partners have been providing cash assistance to the most vulnerable households allowing them to purchase some food and better prepare before the storm struck.

The UN food agency is now mobilising its “last food stocks,” which will be distributed in coordination with national disaster relief teams, Ms. Goossens explained.

However, the needs on the ground exceed WFP’s capacity and the agency is calling for urgent donor support.

The latest disaster “comes on top of an already very critical food security situation,” Ms. Goossens said, as already before the back-to-back cyclones 1.57 million people across the country were food insecure, including 84,000 facing emergency levels of hunger, according to the latest data from the IPC, a UN-backed global food security monitoring system.

“We’re also in the peak of the lean season here in Madagascar and funding shortfalls remain alarming… Our lean season response as well as cyclone response faces a $18 million gap over the next six months,” the WFP official warned.

“We will need… sustained support over the coming months to help people recover, to rebuild and strengthen their resilience against further shocks,” she added. “In fact, we are in at the start of the cyclone season. So, we are also concerned that this is only just the beginning.”

Source link

Asia: Lives upended by cyclones, ‘extreme’ rainfall on the rise, warn UN agencies

Posted on by
Reply

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spokesperson Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva that Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam are among the countries most affected by what she described as “a combination of monsoon-related rainfall and tropical cyclone activity”.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his deep sadness over the tragic loss of life across the region.

In a statement released by his Spokesperson he conveyed condolences to the families of the victims and expresses his solidarity with all those impacted.

UN ready to support all relief efforts

“The United Nations is in close contact with authorities in all four countries and stands ready to support relief and response efforts. UN Country Teams remain at the disposal of Governments to provide necessary assistance.”

“Asia is very, very vulnerable to floods,” WMO’s Ms. Nullis said, explaining that flooding consistently tops the list of climate hazards in the region, according to WMO’s annual State Of The Climate reports.

However, she said that tropical cyclones such as Senyar, which last week brought “torrential rainfall and widespread flooding and landslides” across northern Sumatra in Indonesia, peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand, are rare so close to the Equator.

“It’s not something that we see very often and it means the impacts are magnified because local communities… have got no experience in this,” she stressed.

Hundreds killed

The UN weather agency spokesperson quoted Tuesday’s figures from the Indonesian National Disaster Office indicating 604 fatalities, 464 people missing and 2,600 injured. In total, some 1.5 million people have been affected in Indonesia and more than 570,000 have been displaced.

Turning to Viet Nam, Ms. Nullis said that the south Asian nation has been “battered now for weeks” and is “bracing for yet more heavy rainfall”.

“Exceptional rains in the past few weeks have flooded historic sites, popular tourist resorts and caused massive damages,” she said.

1.79 metres of rain in a day

In late October, one meteorological station in central Viet Nam recorded a national 24-hour rainfall record of 1,739 millimetres, which Ms. Nullis described as “really enormous”.

“It’s the second-highest known total anywhere in the world for 24-hour rainfall,” she said.

This exceptionally high value is currently subject to a formal WMO extremes evaluation committee. According to the agency, a value above 1,700 mm would constitute a record for the Northern Hemisphere and Asia.

Ricardo Pires, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), described what he called a “fast-moving humanitarian emergency” in Sri Lanka, after Cyclone Ditwah made landfall on the country’s east coast last week, affecting some 1.4 million people including 275,000 children.

“With communications down and roads blocked, the true number of children impacted is likely even higher,” Mr. Pires warned. “Homes have been swept away, entire communities isolated, and the essential services children rely on, such as water, healthcare and schooling have been severely disrupted.”

The UNICEF spokesperson stressed that displacement has forced families into unsafe and overcrowded shelters, while the flooding and damaged water systems are increasing disease outbreak risks.

“The needs far outweigh the available resources right now,” he insisted, in an appeal for additional humanitarian funding and support for the most vulnerable.

Commenting on the intensity of the devastating weather events WMO’s Ms. Nullis explained that rising temperatures “increase the potential risk of more extreme rainfall because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture”.

“That’s the law of physics…we are seeing more extreme rainfall and we will continue to do so in the future,” she concluded.

NASA-Built ‘Weather Sensors’ Capture Vital Data on Hurricane Ian

Posted on by
Reply

A pair of microwave radiometers collected data on the storm as they passed over the Caribbean Sea aboard the International Space Station.

Two recently launched instruments that were designed and built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to provide forecasters data on weather over the open ocean captured images of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, as the storm approached Cuba on its way north toward the U.S. mainland.

COWVR (short for Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer) and TEMPEST (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems) observe the planet’s atmosphere and surface from aboard the International Space Station, which passed in low-Earth orbit over the Caribbean Sea at about 12:30 a.m. EDT.

Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province at 4:30 a.m. EDT, according to the National Hurricane Center. At that time, it was a Category 3 hurricane, with estimated wind speeds of 125 mph (205 kph).

From aboard the International Space Station, NASA-built instruments Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) and Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) captured wind and water vapor data from Hurricane Ian as the storm neared Cuba. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The image above combines microwave emissions measurements from both COWVR and TEMPEST. White sections indicate the presence of clouds. Green portions indicate rain. Yellow, red, and black indicate where air and water vapor were moving most swiftly. Ian’s center is seen just off of Cuba’s southern coast, and the storm is shown covering the island with rain and wind.