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Originally Posted by HADIA A. SHEERAZ, Columbia Climate School, September 12 2022

One-third of Pakistan is underwater.

Satellite images from NASA and the European Space Agency show the Indus River spilling beyond its banks, encroaching into nearby agricultural fields, and merging with Hamal Lake (30 miles away) to form one massive lake more than six miles wide and 60 miles long.

How did Pakistan go from a record-breaking heatwave to being submerged in floodwater within a few weeks?

During the sizzling heatwave through May, millions of Pakistanis looked to the skies, praying for the relief of rains.

From June through August, summer monsoon rains dumped 190 percent more rainfall than normal, with the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan receiving over 410 percent and 466 percent above average, respectively. That’s nearly six times more than the 30-year average rainfall for that region.

At one point it rained for 72 hours nonstop.

These “monsoons on steroids,” or “monster monsoons,” as they’ve been dubbed, were fed extraordinarily high levels of moisture during the heatwaves that had scorched Pakistan just weeks before. Meteorologists had predicted that the record-shattering temperatures (exceeding 50°C or 122°F in some cities in Sindh) could cause “above average” levels of rain during Pakistan’s annual monsoon season.

Another factor in the flooding is that Pakistan is home to over 7,000 glaciers — the most glacial ice outside the polar regions. The glacial melt in April-May and the hottest summer on record, coupled with the unexpected arrival of a large-scale depression system from the Arabian Sea, set the stage for historic runoffs that could not be contained by the mighty Indus River, nor by the massive network of dams and reservoirs across its tributaries.

Report, imagery here :-
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/20...lyptic-crisis/