Latest Bay of Bengal Stories

A fundamental shift in the Indian monsoon has occurred over the last few millennia, from a steady humid monsoon that favored lush vegetation to extended periods of drought, reports a new study led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The study has implications for our understanding of the monsoon’s response to climate change. The Indian peninsula sustains over a billion people, yet it lies at the same latitude as the Sahara Desert. Without a monsoon, most of...

Researchers have tracked the spread of antibiotic resistant strains back to the Bay of Bengal Researchers have used next generation sequencing to trace the source and explain the spread of the latest (seventh) cholera pandemic. They have also highlighted the impact of the acquisition of resistance to antibiotics on shaping outbreaks and show resistance was first acquired around 1982. Whole genome sequencing reveals that the particular cholera type responsible for the current pandemic...

Last summer's disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows.Storm systems that bring widespread, long-lasting rain over eastern India and Bangladesh form over the Bay of Bengal, at the east edge of India, said Robert Houze, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. But Pakistan,...

Endangered Bengal tigers in India are not only shrinking population-wise, but they are also shrinking in size, according to a recent study released Thursday that suggests the big cats are becoming physically smaller. Experts say "stress" associated with environmental changes impacting their habitat in the Sunderban mangrove swamps along the India-Bangladesh border is causing the tigers to lose weight. Indian wildlife officials, conducting a survey of the famed beasts in the Sunderbans, found...

System 94B has not been classified as a tropical depression, but NASA satellite data has shown that it is creating heavy rainfall near India's southeastern coast. A second NASA satellite revealed that strong wind shear is continuing to push convection to the northwest of System 94B's center of circulation.The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite viewed an area of thunderstorms associated with System 94B near the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal on December 7 at 0123...

The first tropical storm of the Northern Indian Ocean cyclone season has formed and NASA's Aqua satellite captured its birth. Tropical Storm 1B formed in the early morning hours as the convection around the low level circulation center increased since May 17.NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of 1B from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) at 7:25 UTC (12:25 p.m. Asia/Kolkata time) today, May 18, where if formed off of India's east coast in the Bay of...

India and Bangladesh have argued for nearly 30 years about who controls a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal, but rising sea levels have put an end to the dispute. Oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta, said that New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged.  He said that satellite imagery and sea patrols have confirmed its disappearance. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by...

Tropical Depression 05B is dissipating on the east coast of Sri Lanka today and over the next couple of days, but not before bringing some moderate and heavy rain over the next couple of days to some areas in Sri Lanka and the southeast coast of India, from Chennai, southward.The Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued its final advisory on Tropical Depression 05B, also known as Tropical Storm Ward, on Sunday, December 13 at 2100 UTC (4 p.m. ET). At that time, 05B's maximum sustained winds were...

NASA satellite data and a new modeling approach could improve weather forecasting and save more lives when future cyclones develop.About 15 percent of the world's tropical cyclones occur in the northern Indian Ocean, but because of high population densities along low-lying coastlines, the storms have caused nearly 80 percent of cyclone-related deaths around the world. Incomplete atmospheric data for the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea make it difficult for regional forecasters to provide enough...

Researchers report finding a stronghold for the Irrawaddy, one of the world's rarest freshwater dolphins, deep in the Bangladesh jungles. Scientists counted nearly 6,000 of the dolphins in the South Asian country's Sundarbans mangrove forest adjacent to the Bay of Bengal, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a release. Before the find by the Wildlife Conservation Society there were only a few hundred of the Irrawaddy believed alive. This discovery gives us great hope that there is a...