The Hooghly Ate Your Islands
After reading Tim Blair's post, at timblair.net, of the misleading story published by the Independent about the global warmening disappearance of Lohachara (and Beford) Islands, I went looking for maps.
This picture below is a composite, flattened *.jpg of a *.psd consisting of US Army Map Service maps, Layers 1 and 2, via this page at the University of Texas map library and a screen capture of the same vinicity, Layer 3, using Google Earth.
Registration was performed using pushpins at coincidental latitudes and longitudes on the Google Earth image that matched the L/L on the Army maps. Size and orientation manipulation was necessary to effect the overlay.
Lohachara and Bedford Islands were outlined in red on Layer 4 and the Google Earth map was set at about 50% transparency.
Of course the jpg provided below has no layers, but the psd is available on request. I provide the jpg because many folks don't have the wherewithal to view it.
Observations to which I direct you:
-- Lohachara and Bedford Islands are gone as is most of Khasimara to the north of them.
-- The Hooghly has moved to the east upstream of the islands in the time elapsed, putting the islands directly in the front of the path of the river's main channel (see how the eastern upstream bank has also eroded).
-- There is an island on the opposite side of the channel from the L/B/K islands which has grown to the size of all three other islands in the time elapsed and another formed at about the point in the river's mouth across from where Bedford was, all in the same time that other islands in question have been 'comsumed by the sea'.
One note about the Google Earth satellite image. It has been doctored before it was included in GE to enhance the river's color (a portion of the coloring was not done and appears brownish). NASA has different images of the Delta which I think better portrays the reality of the Delta's turpid and sediment filled waters. One such image can be found here.
Whatever one may think of Global Warmening, the real story here is that there are some researchers who shouldn't be.