What is Floods, Cyclones and Tsunamis ? Explanation

Water is essen­tial for life water cycle ensure that the water that drains into the sea evap­o­rates and come back as cloud to rain and snow over the Earth bring in fresh­wa­ter. how­ev­er there are cer­tain phe­nom­e­na asso­ci­at­ed with the flow of water in nature that can cause untold mis­ery to human beings. 

Subscribe on YouTube

Get free tutorials, exam tips & updates.

Subscribe

Join WhatsApp Channel

Stay updated with instant alerts.

Follow

Free SSC Mock Tests

Boost your preparation with free practice tests.

Start Now

Govt Job Alerts

Get free daily updates on government jobs.

Get Alerts

Prin­ci­pal among these are : flood , cyclones , hur­ri­canes and landslides.

Tsuna­mi caused a great deal of dam­age in south Asian countries.

Floods

Floods are the most com­mon of all the nat­ur­al calami­ties. floods reg­u­lar­ly cleaned thou­sands of life and adverse­ly affect mil­lion of human beings annu­al worldwide. 

Bangladesh and India togeth­er account for over two third of dou­ble death count each year. more than the loss of life and dam­age to prop­er­ty mil­lions of peo­ple are dis­placed every year due to floods in the south Asian countries.

A flood is the dis­charge of water that exceed the canal capac­i­ty of the riv­er.

Flood are caused by dif­fer­ent fac­tors that include:

• Cli­mate extremes — heavy and pro­longed rainfall
• Melt­ing of snow and ice
• Col­lapse of dams 
• Defor­esta­tion and land slides
• Silt­ing of riv­er beds reduc­ing the car­ry­ing capac­i­ty of rivers.
• Lack of coor­di­na­tion between offi­cials of adjoin­ing coun­tries or states fac­ing sim­i­lar problem.

It is pos­si­ble to reduce the adverse effect of flood by con­struc­tion of dams and reser­voirs at appro­pri­ate places , strength­en­ing the embank­ment of on riv­er and Canal , improv­ing the car­ry­ing capac­i­ty of rivers, canals and reser­voir by peri­od­i­cals deep­en­ing and deep­en­ing operation.

Weath­er fore­cast­ing and flood­plain man­age­ment tech­niques can help in min­imis­ing casu­al­ties and damages.

Cyclones

One of the most com­mon coastal calami­ty is the cyclone. cyclones claims many lies and caus­es immense dam­age to prop­er­ty every year.

Cyclones are cost in the trop­i­cal belt when sea water gets heat­ed up 27°C and more so that low pres­sure areas devel­op above the water levels.

The low pres­sure areas remain sta­tion­ary for three to four days and draw ener­gy from the sea sur­face. As the pres­sure in the cen­tre falls, the wind speed increase and could bursts starts spi­ralling around the cen­tre caus­ing squalls. As the pres­sure falls in the centre,the winds in the sur­round­ing areas rush inward cre­at­ing spi­ral­ly mov­ing storms. The cyclone then moves land­ward towards areas of low­est pres­sure. Strong winds and heavy rain destroy and anni­hi­late weath­er comes in their way.

A trop­i­cal cyclone that struck north­ern bay of ben­gal in 1970 caused tidal waves of 6 metres height killing three hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple and destroy­ing 65% of the total fish­ing capac­i­ty of the coastal region.

Today with the advance­ment in weath­er pre­dic­tion tech­niques , remote sens­ing satel­lites and coop­er­a­tion between coun­tries in shar­ing infor­ma­tion on weath­er con­di­tions , it is pos­si­ble to pre­dict the birth of a cyclone and mon­i­tor its move­ment to pin­point the areas where it is like­ly to hit the coast. In spite of this , the dam­age caused is very severe , the well planned relief oper­a­tions going hay­wire in the last minute.

Tsunamis

A Tsuna­mi is a wave in the ocean or in a League that is cre­at­ed by a geo­graph­i­cal event. there are also known as tidal waves or seis­mic sea waves. Most tsunamis are weak and have height of few cen­ti meters but the inten­si­ty varies from time to time. Near the place of ori­gin tsunamis May have height of many meters. 

As they spread out or move into deep ocean , their heights decreas­es. How­ev­er , their height increase again as the tsuna­mi waves reach shal­low water near heights increase again as the tsunamis waves reach shal­low water near impact areas. The expect­ed heights for the larg­er shal­low water near impact areas . the expect­ed heights for the larg­er tsunamis are around 9 to 20 meters. Tsunamis are most often caused by larg­er earth­quake and land­slides. Vol­canic erup­tion can also cause tsunamis . 

On 26 Decem­ber 2004 the Indi­an coast­line expe­ri­ence the most was sit­ting Tsuna­mi in the record­ed his­to­ry. the tsuna­mi was trig­gered by an earth­quake of mag­ni­tude 9 on the Richter scale at 3.4 °N, 95.7°E off the coast of Suma­tra in the Indone­sian Arch­i­pel­ago at 06 : 29 hrs IST(00: 59 hrs GMT). IT dev­as­tat­ed the shores of Indone­sia , Sri lan­ka , India , Thai­land and oth­er coun­tries with waves of up to 15m high , even reach­ing the east coast of Africa , 4500km west of the epi­cen­tre. Almost 79,900 peo­ple were killed by the earth­quake and tsuna­mi in Indone­sia . Tsuna­mi killed at least 41,00 peo­ple in Sri Lan­ka, 10,000 in India and 4,000 in Thailand .

The mas­sive loss of life and prop­er­ty caused by Tsuna­mi of 2004 could have been avoid­ed if only we had an advance warn­ing sys­tem. it was there­fore decid­ed to install the equip­ment required for pro­tect­ing tsunamis. The indige­nous warn­ing sys­tem include putting in place a deep ocean assess­ment and report­ing sys­tem , around 20 data buoys and a soft­ware pro­gram that would help pro­tect and loca­tion time and height of any tidal for­ma­tions like tsunamis based on the changes and dis­tur­bance detect­ed under­wa­ter fol­low­ing seis­mic changes. 

India has tide up with the Pacif­ic Tsuna­mi warn­ing cen­tre and coun­try such as Indone­sia, Thai­land and Myan­mar for the required Inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion in its pro­posed soft­ware pro­gram for the net­work­ing of avail­able data on tsuna­mi and the deep water ocean­ic changes.