New satellite images reveal largest Pakistani lake overflowing dangerously

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successive satellite images show growing lake begin to overflow
The area around Lake Manchar on July 25, Aug. 28 and Sept. 5, 2022, captured by NASA Landsat 8 and 9 satellites. (Image credit: NASA)

After weeks of extreme monsoon rains, Pakistan's largest freshwater lake started overflowing in early September, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of losing their homes, new satellite images reveal. 

The images, captured by NASA's Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites, show breaches in the banks of Lake Manchar, some of which have been made intentionally by local authorities to prevent the overfilled lake from spilling into densely populated areas in the Indus River Valley.

The images show the pre-flood situation on July 25 and then detail the growing extent of the flooding on Aug. 28 and Sept. 5.

Related: Satellite view reveals scope of apocalyptic flooding in Pakistan

Some 100,000 people living in several hundred villages scattered across the valley are at risk of flooding due to the breaches, NASA officials wrote in a statement. The floods, described as Pakistan's worst in at least a decade, have killed more than 1,300 people and injured thousands more. Over 1 million homes have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people are currently displaced.  

A zoomed-in satellite image captured Sept. 5, 2022, shows Lake Manchar water flowing out from breaches. (Image credit: NASA)
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Pakistan's Sindh province, where Lake Manchar is located, is one of the most severely affected by the flooding. The area has already received five times its average annual rainfall this year, NASA said in the statement. More rain is likely in the coming days, according to the U.K. weather forecaster Met Office. 

The government of Pakistan declared a national emergency on Aug. 30, asking for international support to deliver food, drinking water and health supplies and assistance to the affected communities. 

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Tereza Pultarova
Tereza Pultarova
Senior Writer

Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television. She later took a career break to pursue further education and added a Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.