Flooding in Pakistan

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has been issuing warnings since the onset of the pre-Monsoon season in mid-June and issues continuous weather and flood advisories and warnings to assist in emergencies. Heavy and persistent rainfall has been recorded since July causing severe flash floods and widespread flooding.

The event affected first the north-western part of Pakistan and later extended to large parts of the country, with Khyber-Pakhtonkwa, Punjab and Sindh among the most affected provinces. The province of Khyber-Pakhtonkwa received nearly 180 % excess of total July rainfall compared to the monthly long-term average.

Due to a climate anomaly, the rain-carrying winds went further west than usual and could take up more moisture over the Arabian sea, and went much further north westerly to Pakistan than usually during the monsoon, causing the heavy precipitation.

More information about the meteorological conditions leading to the strong precipitation and the subsequent flooding can be found at the website of the German Weather Service (DWD):

The two satellite images of "Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer" (MODIS) illustrate how widespread the flooding has been. The two images show water areas as various shades of blue, vegetation as green, brown colours are bare ground, clouds appear as white and turquoise.

The differences in the extent of water between the two acquisitions is clearly visible. The Indus has swelled its banks and adjacent tributaries are much more clearly visible in the 2010 image.

Click here for a map of the present situation and the affected regions, that has been published by UN organisation OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs):

To quantify the extent of damage during a disaster is difficult because many types of damage do not become visible until the flood water has receeded or reconstruction has begun. As far as the flood in Pakistan is concerned, the following first estimates were presented by the United Nations (as from 19th August 2010):
- Number of affected people in Pakistan: about 20 million
- Fatalities: more than 1500
- Damages or destroyed houses: at least 290 000

The following map, published by UN organisation OCHA at 12 August 2010 , summarises the consequences:

The United Nations - more precisely the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) –released a first response plan, in which they estimate the necessary funds for emergency response to about US$ 460 million. The full report is available on the website:

Specifications of the government of Pakistan can be found on this website:

With regard to affectedness the flood in Pakistan – with about 132 000 sqkm inundated area and more than 14 million affected people – exceeds other severe natural disasters like the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005 and the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004.

An analysis of the international disaster database EM-DAT shows that flooding is the most frequent type of natural disaster in Pakistan since 1900 and that the current flood event by far exceeds the number of affected people in Pakistan in the last 50 years.

In EM-DAT the definition of people affected is: those requiring immediate assistance during a period of emergency, i.e. requiring basic survival needs such as food, water, shelter, sanitation and immediate medical assistance.

Further information on natural disasters and risk management are provided by the German Committee for Disaster Reduction (DKKV):

More information on many other flooding events is provided by NaDiNe, the Natural Disasters Netwoking Platform of Helmholtz-EOS: