New Images from NASA show the extent of the floods in Pakistan. The false color images were taken on August 4th and 28th. In order to better recognize the flood, it was colored deep blue. The images were taken by the Operational Land Imager, or OLI for short. This is a remote sensing instrument onboard the Landsat 8 satellite.
The country has been hit by extreme monsoon rains since mid-June, leading to the worst flooding in a decade, according to NASA. More than 33 million people have been affected, at least 1,100 people have died and over a million homes have been destroyed or damaged, according to Pakistan’s Disaster Management Agency. Pakistani Environment Minister Sherry Rehman said: “Once the whole monsoon flooding is over, a quarter or even a third of Pakistan could be under water. Parts of the country already resemble a small ocean.”
It has been raining almost continuously in Pakistan since mid-June and July was the wettest month since 1961. Between the beginning of July and the end of August, around 85,000 square kilometers were under water, according to the United Nations satellite observation program (UNONE) writes. For comparison – the area of ​​Switzerland is 41,300 square kilometers.