Floods in Northeast India and Bangladesh

Weeks of intense heat in India finally gave way to a late-onset monsoon season, and the people in the sate of Assam in the northeast part of the country traded one environmental insult for another: heat for flooding. A deluge of rain brought the Brahmaputra River and numerous tributaries out of their banks in severe flooding that has displaced almost half a million people. These images show the region on June 16. The images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite.

The false-color image of the pair highlights the presence of standing water, which appears dark blue or black. The river makes a thin squiggly line through the pale tan flood plain, which contrasts against the green vegetation. Flooded areas are obvious all along the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains, which run across the top of the images.

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Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Published June 18, 2003
Data acquired June 16 - 16, 2003

Source:

Aqua > MODIS

Topic:

Hydrosphere > Surface Water > Floods

Collection:

MODIS Rapid Response