Droughts and Flooding Rains
Assessed Research and Data analysis – Tropical Cyclones, Floods and Droughts
DUE DATE: MONDAY 12th MAY
PART A. Cyclones
Question 1.
Complete the following table using data from www.bom.gov.au.
T.C. name Rainfall in a population centre (mm) Wind strength (km/h) Storm surge (metres) Category (1-5)
1. Cyclone Yasi 471 285 5 5
2. Cyclone Tracy 250 240 4 5
Question 2.
For each cyclone:
- What damage was caused?
1. The category 5 Cyclone Yasi caused an extensive amount of damage to the North Queensland coast. Its extravagant power destroyed almost 150 homes and left 650 uninhabitable. Another 2,275 homes developed moderate damage from the TC.
2. The category 5 Cyclone Tracy caused an extremely large amount of damage to Darwin City. It had a confirmed death toll of 49 and with a further 16 missing at sea. At least 90% of homes were damage or completely demolished. An estimate of 45 vessels were damaged or wrecked in harbour. Vegetation around Darwin was minimally affected. The total damage was a total cost of $800 million.
- What were the human preparations?
• Check with your local council or your building control authority to see if your home has been built to cyclone standards.
• Check that the walls, roof and eaves of your home are secure.
• Trim treetops and branches well clear of your home (get council permission).
• Preferably fit shutters, or at least metal screens, to all glass areas.
• Clear your property of loose material that could blow about and possibly cause injury or damage during extreme winds.
• In case of a storm surge/tide warning, or other flooding, know your nearest safe high ground and the safest access route to it.
• Prepare an emergency kit containing:
- a portable battery radi...
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...ectiveness in helping humans manage drought in Australia. Briefly justify your answer.
1. Individual 2/Business 1
2. Government 2
3. Individual 1
4. Business 2
5. Government 1
I believe that water tanks would be the most useful in terms of price and in the long run. Although a recycling station would save us a lot of water, it would cost a lot and would be better off by supplying the money for damns and water storage centres.
Criteria 5 marks 4 marks 3 marks 2 marks 1 marks 0 marks
Use of data and information sources to draw conclusions about cyclone severity and behaviour
Understanding of the influence of the Southern Oscillation on droughts and floods in Eastern Australia
Understanding of the strategies which can be used to manage drought in Australia
Understanding the effect of cyclones, floods and droughts on humans in Australia
...nd others for injuries, look for and extinguish small fires, inspect your home for damage, listen to the radio for instructions, and expect aftershocks.
Christian Lous Lange once said, “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” In the 1950’s technology was just pieces of machinery that made doing task simplier. That was until the Cold War. The U.S dropped a bomb in the ocean in Hiroshima, Japan. It killed thousands and injured many. The U.S misused the power of technology. In the short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury, he writes about a house that is filled with machinery that can do everything from cleaning, cooking, etc. In the end the house is destroyed by a fire that comes from a fallen tree branch. The house is left crying out in terror and is destroyed. Technology has harmed society because even the most wonderful technology
With the winds and waters sweeping away taking away people’s lives and property the storm made it to be one of the costliest in the history of America. According to FEMA:
Leading up to this storm, many prominent scientists believed that the hurricane would never make landfall, or if it did hit, would not cause any major damage. Due to this foolhardy belief held by the scientists, many civilians did not have any time to evacuate their homes and barely escaped with their loved ones and whatever small valuables or keepsakes they could grab. Regretfully, many families had to leave everything they had behind. Hurricane Andrew also damaged the livelihood of many small shop owners or farms and caused long term problems as well. Due to the large flooding and high wind speeds, much of southern Florida was left in ruin and many years were spent trying to clean the rubble and restore buildings. Hurricane Andrew also destroyed many precious ecosystems on top of all of that.
Craig E.Colten’s book centers on a familiar problem that New Orleans city constantly faces, the flooding. In particular, the book focuses on the genesis of the flooding danger. In reference to Colten’s book, this essay will attack the statement “The environmental elements, as opposed to human actions, fully account for New Orleans’ problem with water”. The rationale of opening up unusable land by draining waters and construction of levees to contain Mississippi River water led to serious flooding during heavy downpour. After raising the levee systems to the desired levels in 1920s, the issues of drainage become apparent and the heavy rainfalls became the main cause of the wave of flooding in New Orleans. The thunderstorms –spawned rain replaced Mississippi River as the greatest threat. The water problem in New Orleans emanated from the human behavior of destroying natural conditions in New Orleans through natural environment modification to accommodate residential and commercial housing. From the foundation, New Orleans faced flooding threat, first from the Mississippi River and then downpour floods. Colten (2005) maintain that human wrested New Orleans site from nature resulting in continual struggle with water and floods.
There are many causes of drought. The first element is about the water cycle. The moving clouds and moisture over the atmosphere cannot make a place receive the normal amount of rainfall during a period of time. ( Lincoln, 2014). It means there is not have enough moisture to create precipitation. If residents who live near a river, most of their water comes from this river. And their drought might because of the less precipitation at upstream. (ibid). As a result of the drought there will be a shortage of water in the region. The most important climatic phenomenon that causes drought is Southern Oscillation. “Southern Oscillation is a primary air pressure change which is a seesawing of atmospheric pressure between an area just to the north of Australia and the central Pacific Ocean.” (Study Guide 23). It is also linked to El Nino and La Nina. “El Nino is a complex interaction between air and sea in tropical Pacific. “(Robert, 2013). El Nino means little boy in Spanish and also means unusually high atmospheric pressure and sinking air through Northern Australian w...
Hurricanes are formed over tropical waters. These intense storms consist of winds over 74 miles per hour (Ahrens & Sampson, 2011). The storms addressed here are Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. This paper will explore the contrasts and comparisons between these two horrific storms.
A Hurricane is a tropical storm with winds more than 74 miles per hour (mph). Hurricane wind damage is influenced by the duration and change of wind direction, amount of rainfall and how well land structures are build. Hurricanes are measure in five different categories and each category can produce different degree of damages. Category One Hurricane has sustained winds 74-95 mph. Category Two Hurricane has sustained winds of 96-110 mph with very strong winds that can produce widespread damage and extensive damage to power lines. Category Three Hurricane has sustained winds of 111-130 mph that will cause extensive damage with near total power loss that could last several days to weeks. Category Four Hurricane has sustained winds of 131-155 with extremely dangerous winds causing devastating damage. Finally, a category five hurricane has sustained winds greater than 155 mph. This is a catastrophic damage storm. Category five can have severe injury or death due to wind blown debris. A Category five hurricane can produce extensive power outages that will last for weeks to perhaps months. Therefor...
On November 12th, 1970, the deadliest cyclone in the history of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, struck around the northwest shores of the Bay of Bengal. East Pakistan was undergoing widespread poverty at the time, leading to a wide range of uncertainty in the death toll of the cyclone (Encyclopedia 501). Tensions between East and West Pakistan were at large at the time, leading West Pakistan to be disinclined to assisting East Pakistan in recovering from the storm (History 4). This became a factor to the national mutilation of East Pakistan (Geol 1). This calamity is by no means the strongest storm in history. The storm merely struck the worst possible place at the worst possible time (Disaster 172). Due to this, Bhola is frequently recognized as the most devastating tropical storm in history (International 5).
...e roads and highways will be jammed with frantic people trying to reach safety. You should always listen and follow any given directions immediately. If you don’t have to leave, put all the outside things that might blow away in a safe place such as lawn furniture, bicycles, and toys. Water mains can also break, so filling containers with drinking water is a good idea. Put enough to last several days.
Flooding in Bangladesh Bangladesh is a low lying country and almost all of Bangladesh lies on the largest delta in the world. It is situated between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean with a vast river basin made up of the Ganges, the Brahamaputra, the Meghna and their tributaries. It also has the highest population density in the world with 847 inhabitants per square kilometer. Bangladesh is one of the world's least developed countries and prone to natural disasters, such as cyclones, floods and droughts. Half of it is less than five meters above sea level.
Authorities have attempted to implement codes or regulations, but that has proved to be very difficult tasks becasue there are many variables that effect the dynamic response of buildings. One way to try to avoid disaster is to evaluate seismic risk is to look at a buildings hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and location. Hazards are, for example, landslides ad soil type. Exposure is a building's occupancy and function. Vulnerability is the expected performance of a building's system, and location is how often earthquakes occur in the area. (Lagorio)
Taher, R. (2011). General recommendations for improved building practices in earthquake and hurricane prone areas. San Francisco, CA: Architecture for Humanity Retrieved from
Hurricanes occur all over the world, at different times, but commonly through June first and late November. However in late August 2005 a catastrophic hurricane struck. This was Hurricane Katrina. With winds traveling over one hundred miles per hour making it a category five on the Saffir- Simpson Hurricane Scale it was said to have cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Hurricane Katrina flooded nearly forty thousand homes, and killed at least two thousand people (“Hurricane”). An average category five hurricane has enough energy to power street lamps for more than twenty seven thousand hours (Williams 58). Knowing about Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation of the city in New Orleans would be beneficial. Also, general information on hurricanes can help civilians and people of higher authority better understand and prepare for damage that could once hit their town and community. Because experts know the general information on these storms they can help explain to the public why and how Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes occur. Hopefully, in the future civilians will know and use this information to their advantage against hurricanes.
Thailand is a tropical country which is part of the Indochina peninsula. Thailand is bordered in the north by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), in the east by Lao PDR and Cambodia, in the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and in the west by the Andaman Sea and the Union of Myanmar (Thailand Population 2013). The total land area is about 512,000 km2. The current population as of 2013 within the Kingdom of Thailand is about 69.52 million people, which is an approximate 6.2% increase from the population taken in the 2010 census (Thailand Population 2013). Every year in this beautiful country flooding in Bangkok is a critical issue which impacts the people of Thailand.