Pakistan floods could have been predicted, minimised, says study

Megan Rowling Reuters AlertNet: Scientists say the rainfall that brought devastating floods to Pakistan in the middle of last year was predicted several days in advance by a European forecasting centre, and the information could have helped minimise the disaster had it been passed on and used in the right way locally.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta examined raw data from computer models at a European meteorological centre which indicated the monsoon downpours were imminent. They conclude in a paper, due to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), that "the heavy rainfall pulses throughout July and early August were predictable with a high probability six to eight days in advance".

The study says the floods could have been predicted if the data, which originated from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), had been processed and fed into a hydrological model, which takes terrain into account. … Yet, according to a statement from the AGU, the rainfall warnings did not reach Pakistan because the ECMWF, a UK-based organisation supported by 33 countries, mainly European, does not have a cooperating agreement with the South Asian nation.

…Peter Webster, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of the study, said if he and colleagues had been working with Pakistan, they would have known the floods were coming 8 to 10 days in advance. "This disaster could have been minimised and even the flooding could have been minimised," he said in the AGU statement….