Major floods and landslides have caused the death of a hundred people in the northeast of Brazil: in question, “waves from the east”, torrential rains from Africa.
You will also be interested
[EN VIDÉO] How to deal with natural disasters? Every year many natural disasters ravage the countries of the South. Unfortunately, with the few means available, the management of these states of crisis is often problematic. Sébastien Hardy, geographer of the IRD (Research Institute for Development) talks to us during this video about the solutions envisaged by the organization to deal with the problem.
After experiencing several months of drought, northeastern Brazil has been confronted with several very rainy degradations that have already led to multiple floods those last weeks. Even if the risk of torrential rains and landslides had been predicted and announced by the country’s meteorological service, the disaster could not be avoided in recent days in the Recife region: after the latest bad weather, the soils waterlogged and no longer able to absorb further rains. However, the precipitation of the last weekend was particularly intense in the space of only a few hours. 236 mm fell in the state of Pernambuco, three weeks of rain in just one night.
These are easterly waves (eastern waves, in English), thunderstorms caused by a tropical depression moving from east to west. These stormy rains from Africa are pushed by the trade winds and are quite usual at this time of year. May, June and July are indeed the rainiest months of the year, but the weekend rains were well above normal.
The temperature currently very high in the ocean is an aggravating factor: the warmer the sea, the more the depressions storeenergy and the more rain they pour. Another reason that explains the magnitude of the disaster, the buildings anarchic (mostly slums) on unstable terrain in a very hilly relief and therefore subject to runoff.
The next few weeks promise to be wet again and the authorities fear new disasters due to the soil very weakened by the recent bad weather, but also by Deforestation.
AGORA | Situação é critique em Recife e outras cidades de Pernambuco nesta manhã de sábado com alagamentos e inundações generalizados. Há rios deslizamentos e duas mortes já confirmedadas. pic.twitter.com/3HQykZTMST
— MetSul.com (@metsul) May 28, 2022
Do you want to access Futura without being interrupted by advertising?
Discover our online subscriptions and browse without ads! At this moment, the Mag Futura is offered for a 3-month subscription to the subscription “I participate in the life of Futura”!
What is Mag Futura?
- Our first paper journal of more than 200 pages to make science accessible to as many people as possible
- A dive into the heart of 4 scientific themes that will mark 2022, from the Earth to the Moon
*Mag Futura is sent after the third month of registration.
Interested in what you just read?