Flooding Early

by Katie Kish on Jan.10, 2008, under Africa

It’s science - it floods in South Africa. Rainy season begins in October reaching a climax around January - March and ends off in April. In previous years it wasn’t until February or March that the waters started creeping up for the banks of lakes and reservoirs. But this year the news started pouring in as early as December about the floods creating problems such as cramping up roads and cutting off farmers. It was as early as January 4th that the Pungue and Buzi rivers reached their tipping point. All the Zambezi main tributaries are at high levels.

Unusually heavy rain continues to beat down on Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The river levels in Mozambique are of particular concern. The Zambezi River is rising bringing water discharge from the Cahora Bassa dam to levels that were not reached until late February during last years season. 72, 000 people in Mozambique alone have been affected as the floods damage crops and infrastructure. 13, 000 people were evacuated on January 7th. Over 31 000 acres of arable land have been lost to the flood waters. There have also been an increase in outbreaks of diseases such as malaria and diarrhoeal.

Check out relief web for more details and numbers.

3 comments for this entry:

rob shef
January 10th, 2008 on 4:07 am
im convinced that the longer we let global warming stew in our find world the more of these sorts of things we are going to see. how many people need to be displaced? ran out of their house? destroyed by natural disasters? before the world sees that we are doing it. we are slaughtering people because we refuse to help the earth.
christian huynh
January 11th, 2008 on 2:52 am
I agree with rob shef that our current way of life needs to change. we are obviously headed down a bad path regardless of whether global climate change is occurring or going to occur. But let’s not jump to conclusions on this Early Flooding, correlation does not equal causation, remember to be scientific. Ask questions such as, is this a normal pattern of flooding? How has other global climate phenomenons affected the region, such as El Nina? Is this increase in rainfall related to human activity?
christian huynh
January 11th, 2008 on 4:29 am
There’s a paper which talks about the Long-Term variations of annual flows of the Okavango and Zambezi Rivers. Which I believe are part of the river systems talked about in relief web. In fact its called “Long-term variations in annual flows of the Okavango and Zambezi Rivers.” It worth a look at. I just skimmed over it but I did catch on certain things (things I actually understood). There are periods increased and decreasing annual flows (both minimal and maximal)in both rivers, which are shown to be cyclical and that we are in a period of increasing flow. I didnt really see anything that said how much of an increase there has been compared to the past. I’m sure if I spent more time looking through it I could say more, but I’ll leave that to the more intereted.

Mazvimavi, D., Wolski, P. Long-Term variations of annual flows of the Okavango and Zambezi Rivers. Phys Chem Earth: 31. 944-951. 2006