Myanmar is at risk to several natural hazards, including extreme temperatures, drought, cyclones, flooding and storm surge, and heavy rainfall events. Drought is considered the most severe natural hazard in the country based on the impacts that it has on health, property, assets, and livelihoods.
This section provides a summary of key natural hazards and their associated socioeconomic impacts in a given country. It allows for a quick evaluation of most vulnerable areas through the spatial comparison of natural hazard data with development data, thereby identifying exposed livelihoods and natural systems.
The charts provide overview of the most frequent natural disaster in a given country and understand the impacts of those disasters on human populations.
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Climate change is now recognized to have a significant impact on disaster management efforts and pose a significant threat to the efforts to meet the growing needs of the most vulnerable populations. The demands of disaster risk management are such that concise, clear, and reliable information is crucial. The information presented here offers insight into the frequency, impact and occurrence of natural hazards. Source (PDF)
Understanding natural hazard occurrence as well as historical climate conditions, in relation to development contexts, is critical to understanding a country’s historical vulnerability. This tool allows the visualization of different natural hazards or historical climate conditions with socio-economic and development datasets. Select the Development Context and either a Natural Hazard or Climate Condition and overlay horizontally by sliding the toggle left or right to gain a broader sense of historically vulnerable areas.
Data presented under Historical Climate Conditions are reanalysis products derived from ERA5-Land data. ERA5-Land is a global land-surface dataset at 9 km resolution, consistent with atmospheric data from the ERA5 reanalysis from 1950 onward. Climate reanalyses combine past observations with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. They provide a comprehensive description of the observed climate as it has evolved during recent decades, on 3D grids at sub-daily intervals.
This data has been collected, aggregated and processed by the Climate Resilience Cluster of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
- There has been an increase in the prevalence of drought events in Myanmar. Drought years with moderate intensity were frequent in the 1980's and the 1990's. Extended dry seasons and increased temperatures have caused an increase in the prevalence of drought. Severe droughts have increased in frequency from 1990 to 2002. In 2010, severe drought diminished village water sources across the country and destroyed agricultural yields of peas, sugar cane, tomato, and rice.
- Myanmar has seen an increase in intensity and frequency of cyclone/strong winds. In the past (before 2000), cyclones made landfall (i.e., center of the storm moved across the coast) along Myanmar’s coast once every three years. Since the turn of the century, cyclones have made landfall along Myanmar’s coastline every year.
- Myanmar has experienced an increase in extreme high temperatures. During summer 2010, 1,482 heat-related disorders were reported and 260 heat-related deaths occurred across Myanmar.
- Myanmar has seen an increase in the occurrence of flooding and storm surge. From 1910 to 2000, there have been 12 major floods in the country.
- Rainfall patterns in Myanmar have become unpredictable with regular reports of record-breaking rainfall. Over the period 1960-2009, shorter rainfall seasons in combination with erratic and intense rainfall resulted in numerous flooding events.
More information on natural hazards can be found at ThinkHazard.