A false-color image of Bangladesh flooding acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft. In this image, land is tan, and clouds are pink and white. Water comes across as black or dark brown.
The month of July falls in the middle of the monsoon season of Bangladesh. About 80 percent of Bangladesh's rain falls during the monsoon season. The rain is essential for the agriculture sector of the country. Heavy rainfall often causes floods and mudslides. This causes a lot of sufferings to the people. For the first two weeks of July 2002, floods had ravaged eastern India and northern Bangladesh, killing over 50 people and displacing hundreds of thousands from their homes. The above image acquired on July 16, 2002, shows some of the worst flooding. The dark brown swollen river at the top of the image is the Brahmaputra River, which flows through the middle of the Indian state of Assam. Normally, the river and its tributaries would resemble a tangle of thin lines. Cloud cover obstructs additional flooding in northern Bangladesh.
