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15 September 2009
Fatal landslides in S. Asia in 2009
The key driver of landslides in S. Asia is the SW (summer) monsoon, which brings prolonged and sometimes heavy rainfall across much of the Indian subcontinent. This year the monsoon has been comparatively weak so far, with only a month or so to go. Indeed, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology maps of the total monsoon rainfall give a picture of considerable rainfall deficit, although it should be noted that …
2 August 2009
The low level of NH hurricanes and typhoons in summer 2009
One of the reasons that the northern hemisphere summer is essentially the global landslide season is that landfalling tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) represent a rather efficient way of triggering slope failures. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, Taiwan, Japan, SE and S China, the Philippines and Vietnam. Typhoon rain is astonishing to experience for the first time – peak intensities of 100 mm per hour are not …
15 July 2009
Update on the South Asian Monsoon
The seasonal landslide pattern in South Asia remains very substantively below the long term mean this year – to date at least the monsoon is failing. The level of the problem is illustrated rather well by this map of the monsoon season rainfall anomaly for India, from Monsoon Online: The result is that the number of landslides in South Asia is very much below average, which is of course good …
6 May 2009
Early May is the start of the landslide season
Whilst the transition towards the Northern Hemisphere summer is rather pleasant for many of us, the start of May also marks the start of the landslide season in the Northern Hemisphere. Of course the main problems kick in when the SW monsoon really gets going in Asia and the tropical cyclone season properly begins in the N. Pacific and N. Atlantic basins, but already there are clear signs that the …
27 August 2008
The influence of the summer monsoon on fatal landslides in Asia
I am currently putting together a keynote paper for the forthcoming International Conference on Slopes, which is being held in Malaysia in November. I have been looking at the occurrence of fatal landslides in Asia, using the Durham Landslide Database as the source of data. I have plotted the number of fatal landslides by month for 2002-2007 for three areas – South Asia (i.e. the Indian subcontinent), East Asia (which …
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
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