Sunday, October 18, 2009

Typhoon Parma - rainfall and landslide maps

NASA have recently produced a map of the distribution of rainfall from Typhoon Parma (Pepeng) in the Philippines:

The map has been produced from "the Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis, which includes rainfall observations from many satellites that are calibrated to match more detailed rainfall observations from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission". I am not sure how reliable this is, but it is certainly a useful first estimate.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the distribution of fatal landslides with this map. I have used the amazing NDCC daily reports to compile a map of the landslides that killed people. I can only locate the slides to within a couple of kilometres, but for this exercise that is good enough. So here is a Google Earth map of the fatal landslides:

Each dot is a single fatal landslide - click on the image for a better view in a new window. Note the cluster in the centre of the image - this is Baguio City where there were many slides.


Not a bad relationship actually, but far from simple - but then fatal landslides are certainly not simple things.

Comments welcome.

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