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127-552: Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis ( Burmese : နာဂစ် ; Urdu : نرگس , [ˈnərɡɪs] ) was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclone made landfall in Myanmar on Friday, 2 May 2008, sending a storm surge 40 kilometres up the densely populated Irrawaddy delta , causing catastrophic destruction and at least 138,373 fatalities. The Labutta Township alone

254-402: A CNN reporter covering the effects of the storm. The reporter was eventually forced to leave the country out of fear of being imprisoned. On 9 May 2008, the junta officially declared that their acceptance of international aid relief would be limited to food, medicines and other supplies as well as financial aid, but would not allow additional foreign aid workers or military units to operate in

381-542: A USS  Essex -led American carrier group full of aid left the Burmese coast after being denied entry for several weeks, taking its aid back undelivered. On 27 May, to complicate world opinion and in contrast to numerous and varied accounts from international relief organisations, the Burmese junta praised U.N. aid. On 5 June 2008, Amnesty International released a report saying that at least thirty people had been evicted from refugee camps . The report also indicated that

508-510: A pitch-register language like Shanghainese . There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table, the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example. For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone: In syllables ending with /ɰ̃/ , the checked tone is excluded: In spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with

635-620: A subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family . The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script , either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets. Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages , of which Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non- Sinitic languages. Burmese

762-591: A bad situation. Almost all the houses are smashed. People are in a terrible situation." Another UN official said that "The Irrawaddy delta was hit extremely hard not only because of the wind and rain but because of the storm surge ." Burst sewage mains caused the landscape to flood with waste, ruining the rice crop. The Daily Telegraph (UK) reported that food prices in Myanmar could be affected. Woradet Wirawekhin ( th: วรเดช วีระเวคิน), deputy director general of Thailand 's Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated on 7 May 2008 that, in reference to

889-559: A consistent global displacement of the ITCZ under anthropogenic climate change. In contrast, most of the same simulations show narrowing and intensification under the same prescribed conditions. However, simulations in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) have shown greater agreement over some regional shifts of the ITCZ in response to anthropogenic climate change, including a northward displacement over

1016-478: A few days after India's request was accepted. Hampering the relief efforts, only ten days after the cyclone, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake occurred nearby and measured 7.9 in magnitude , taking 87,476 lives and causing US$ 150 billion in damage in the process, making it the costliest disaster in Chinese history and fourth-costliest disaster ever known. Furthermore, some donated aid items were found to be available in

1143-449: A further CHF 73.9 million. Red Cross spokesman Matt Cochrane said that cyclone survivors needed everything. They needed emergency shelter to keep them dry, including food supplies. He said stagnant waters were a perfect breeding ground for the malaria mosquito , so insecticide-treated nets were needed. The Red Cross suffered a setback when a boat carrying supplies sank when it hit a submerged tree. Everyone aboard survived, but most of

1270-543: A lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words from Sanskrit (religion), Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), and Chinese (games and food). Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such as Portuguese . Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese: Since the end of British rule, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans (especially from English) by coining new words ( neologisms ). For instance, for

1397-659: A monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of [sʰwáɰ̃] , which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma. The standard dialect is represented by the Yangon dialect because of the modern city's media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် , kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon,

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1524-498: A month if food did not reach them. Médecins Sans Frontières landed a plane of 40 tons of relief and medical supplies in Rangoon. After clearing customs the supplies were transferred to local MSF warehouses. They have approximately 200 workers in the region, many of whom have been involved in long-term projects there and were already in the region. World Vision launched a US$ 3 million appeal and sought to get international aid into

1651-440: A number of regional features such as local atmospheric jets and waves, proximity to the oceans, terrain-induced convective systems, moisture recycling, and spatiotemporal variability of land cover and albedo. The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) is a reverse-oriented, or west-northwest to east-southeast aligned, trough extending from the west Pacific warm pool southeastwards towards French Polynesia . It lies just south of

1778-523: A report submitted by Bansan Bunnak ( th: บรรสาน บุนนาค), the Thai ambassador in Yangon, conditions in the city had deteriorated and that most businesses and markets were closed. Mr. Wirawekhin also reported that the locals faced even more adversity in basic subsistence, because local food prices had increased two- or threefold. On 6 May 2008, the Burmese government representation in New York City formally asked

1905-459: A statement saying it had requested Burma to accept international aid especially that from the United States, to which Burma agreed. According to various reports, Indian authorities had warned Burma about the danger that Cyclone Nargis posed 48 hours before it hit the country's coast. As of 16 May 2008, India's offer to send a team of 50 medical personnel to set up two independent mini-hospitals in

2032-466: A stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches. The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay." The syllable structure of Burmese

2159-461: A tracer of the ascending branch of the Hadley cell and is wet. The dry descending branch is the horse latitudes . The location of the ITCZ gradually varies with the seasons, roughly corresponding with the location of the thermal equator. As the heat capacity of the oceans is greater than air over land, migration is more prominent over land. Over the oceans, where the convergence zone is better defined,

2286-520: A warship to the Burmese coast. The French UN ambassador denied the LHD Mistral was a warship , and claimed Myanmar's refusal to allow increased aid into the country "could lead to a true crime against humanity ." France stated the ship in question was carrying 1,500 tons of relief supplies. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused the ruling junta of allowing the disaster to grow into a "man-made catastrophe" through its failure to act. He also rebuked

2413-531: A well-defined eye with a diameter of 19 km (12 mi), and early on 2 May, the JTWC estimated that the cyclone reached peak 1-minute winds of 215 km/h (135 mph), as it approached the coast of Myanmar, making it a Category 4 storm. At the same time, the IMD assessed Nargis as attaining peak 3-minute sustained winds of 165 km/h (105 mph). Around 1200 UTC on 2 May, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in

2540-618: Is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share a common set of tones, consonant clusters, and written script. However, several Burmese dialects differ substantially from standard Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes. Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay - Yangon dialect continuum ) comes from

2667-465: Is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide , and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɰ̃/ . Some representative words are: Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone The Intertropical Convergence Zone ( ITCZ / ɪ tʃ / ITCH , or ICZ ), known by sailors as

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2794-442: Is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ] . The vowels of Burmese are: The monophthongs /e/ , /o/ , /ə/ , /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda ); the diphthongs /ei/ , /ou/ , /ai/ and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda). /ə/ only occurs in a minor syllable , and is the only vowel that is permitted in a minor syllable (see below). The close vowels /i/ and /u/ and

2921-512: Is sometimes referred to as a monsoon trough (a usage that is more common in Australia and parts of Asia). The ITCZ was originally identified from the 1920s to the 1940s as the Intertropical Front ( ITF ), but after the recognition in the 1940s and the 1950s of the significance of wind field convergence in tropical weather production, the term Intertropical Convergence Zone ( ITCZ )

3048-580: Is the value of the four native final nasals: ⟨မ်⟩ /m/ , ⟨န်⟩ /n/ , ⟨ဉ်⟩ /ɲ/ , ⟨င်⟩ /ŋ/ , as well as the retroflex ⟨ဏ⟩ /ɳ/ (used in Pali loans) and nasalisation mark anusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as in တံခါး tankhá 'door', and တံတား tantá 'bridge', or else replaces final -m ⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after

3175-635: Is the word "moon", which can be လ la̰ (native Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း [sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Pali canda 'moon'), or သော်တာ [t̪ɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit). The consonants of Burmese are as follows: According to Jenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016 :15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants of သ are dental stops ( /t̪, d̪/ ), rather than fricatives ( /θ, ð/ ) or affricates. These phonemes, alongside /sʰ/ , are prone to merger with /t, d, s/ . An alveolar /ɹ/ can occur as an alternate of /j/ in some loanwords. The final nasal /ɰ̃/

3302-486: The [ ɹ ] sound, which has become [ j ] in standard Burmese. Moreover, Arakanese features a variety of vowel differences, including the merger of the ဧ [e] and ဣ [i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood" သွေး is pronounced [θw é ] in standard Burmese and [θw í ] in Arakanese. The Burmese language's early forms include Old Burmese and Middle Burmese . Old Burmese dates from

3429-569: The /l/ medial, which is otherwise only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. They also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop . Beik has 250,000 speakers while Tavoyan has 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese. The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of

3556-706: The 1970 Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh . Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children , stated: "We're looking at 50,000 dead and millions of homeless, I'd characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Myanmar and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the [2004] tsunami on individual countries. There might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka ." Foreign aid workers estimated that 2 million to 3 million were homeless, often going to one of 260,000 refugee camps in Myanmar. It

3683-507: The 1991 Bangladesh cyclone , with estimates of people missing at 53,836 and 84,537 confirmed dead. At least 10,000 people were reported to have perished in the delta town of Bogale alone. The total death total is unknown, as critics of the junta argue that the numbers where unreported to avoid political fallout. It is now thought that hundreds of thousands of people will never be found after Nargis because their bodies have decayed, been buried, or were washed out to sea. Some NGOs estimated that

3810-484: The Age of Sail , to find oneself becalmed in this region in a hot and muggy climate could mean death when wind was the only effective way to propel ships across the ocean. Calm periods within the doldrums could strand ships for days or weeks. Even today, leisure and competitive sailors attempt to cross the zone as quickly as possible as the erratic weather and wind patterns may cause unexpected delays. In 2009, thunderstorms along

3937-524: The Ayeyarwady Division of Myanmar at peak strength. The storm gradually weakened as it proceeded east over Myanmar, with its proximity to the Andaman Sea preventing rapid weakening. Its track turned to the northeast due to the approach of a mid-latitude trough to its northwest, passing just north of Yangon with winds of 130 km/h (80 mph). Early on 3 May, the IMD issued its final advisory on

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4064-479: The Bangladesh Army , were sent to Myanmar on 8 May 2008. They carried stockpiles of emergency aid and hundreds of aid workers with experience in coping with the aftermath of a cyclone. India, one of the few countries which maintains close relations with Myanmar, launched Operation Sahayata under which two Indian Navy ships and two Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft supplied the first international relief material to

4191-518: The Burmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used in palm-leaf manuscripts , as opposed to the traditional square block-form letters used in earlier periods. The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced back to Middle Burmese. Modern Burmese emerged in the mid-18th century. By this time, male literacy in Burma stood at nearly 50%, which enabled

4318-501: The Coriolis effect imparted by Earth's rotation . For instance, when the ITCZ is situated north of the Equator, the southeast trade wind changes to a southwest wind as it crosses the Equator. The ITCZ is formed by vertical motion largely appearing as convective activity of thunderstorms driven by solar heating, which effectively draw air in; these are the trade winds. The ITCZ is effectively

4445-485: The Dvorak technique indicated the cyclone could have weakened to tropical storm status. By late on 29 April, convection had begun to rebuild, though immediate restrengthening was prevented by increased wind shear . On 1 May 2008, after turning nearly due eastward, Cyclone Nargis began rapidly intensifying , due to greatly improved outflow aided by an approaching upper-level trough . Strengthening continued as Nargis developed

4572-602: The English language in the colonial educational system, especially in higher education. In the 1930s, the Burmese language saw a linguistic revival, precipitated by the establishment of an independent University of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university by Pe Maung Tin , modeled on Anglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford. Student protests in December of that year, triggered by

4699-714: The Mon people , who until recently formed the majority in Lower Burma . Most Mon loanwords are so well assimilated that they are not distinguished as loanwords, as Burmese and Mon were used interchangeably for several centuries in pre-colonial Burma. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music. As a natural consequence of British rule in Burma , English has been another major source of vocabulary, especially with regard to technology, measurements, and modern institutions. English loanwords tend to take one of three forms: To

4826-522: The Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan ( မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း ), was compiled in 1978 by the commission. Burmese is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers (or diglossic varieties ): The literary form of Burmese retains archaic and conservative grammatical structures and modifiers (including affixes and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form. Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since

4953-716: The Myanmar Medical Association in Yangon for deployment in the Irrawaddy Delta. RM 1.8 mil was collected for victims of Myanmar's cyclone victims through The Star Myanmar Relief Fund and handed to Mercy Malaysia executive council member Dr Ahmad Faizal Perdaus. A second Malaysian Red Crescent Society (MRCS) disaster relief team was sent to Myanmar on 21 May 2008. Thailand sent US$ 100,000 in supplies, thirty tonnes of medical supplies and twelve tonnes of food supplies from Thai Red Cross . Additionally, Chaiya Sasomsap, Minister of Public Health of Thailand, stated that

5080-605: The Pyu language . These indirect borrowings can be traced back to orthographic idiosyncrasies in these loanwords, such as the Burmese word "to worship", which is spelt ပူဇော် ( pūjo ) instead of ပူဇာ ( pūjā ), as would be expected by the original Pali orthography. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in

5207-515: The United Nations for help, but in other ways it remained resistant to the most basic assistance. On 7 May 2008, the government of Myanmar had not officially endorsed international assistance, but stated that they were, "willing to accept international assistance, preferably bilateral , government to government." The biggest challenge was obtaining visas for entry into the country. According to Thai Rath Newspaper of Thailand on 8 May 2008, in

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5334-404: The doldrums or the calms because of its monotonous windless weather, is the area where the northeast and the southeast trade winds converge. It encircles Earth near the thermal equator though its specific position varies seasonally. When it lies near the geographic Equator , it is called the near-equatorial trough . Where the ITCZ is drawn into and merges with a monsoonal circulation, it

5461-413: The 11th to the 16th century ( Pagan to Ava dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century ( Toungoo to early Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century to the present. Word order , grammatical structure, and vocabulary have remained markedly stable well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g., function words ). The earliest attested form of

5588-457: The 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools. In most cases, the corresponding affixes in the literary and spoken forms are totally unrelated to each other. Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms: Historically the literary register was preferred for written Burmese on the grounds that "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". In the mid-1960s, some Burmese writers spearheaded efforts to abandon

5715-410: The 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens from the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma. British rule in Burma eroded the strategic and economic importance of the Burmese language; Burmese was effectively subordinated to

5842-521: The British in the lead-up to the independence of Burma in 1948. The 1948 Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as the official language of the newly independent nation. The Burma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal of modernizing the Burmese language in order to replace English across all disciplines. Anti-colonial sentiment throughout

5969-552: The Buddhist clergy (monks) from the laity ( householders ), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks). The following are examples of varying vocabulary used for Buddhist clergy and for laity: Burmese primarily has a monosyllabic received Sino-Tibetan vocabulary. Nonetheless, many words, especially loanwords from Indo-European languages like English, are polysyllabic, and others, from Mon, an Austroasiatic language, are sesquisyllabic . Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in

6096-458: The Burmese junta declined to issue visas for many of those individuals. These political tensions raised the concern that some food and medical supplies might become unusable, even before the Burmese junta officially accepted the international relief effort. Bangladesh , which has had experience with cyclones in the past, was one of the first countries to supply aid to Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Two planes carrying aid, organised by

6223-656: The Burmese language into Lower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s, Mon , an Austroasiatic language, was the principal language of Lower Burma, employed by the Mon people who inhabited the region. Lower Burma's shift from Mon to Burmese was accelerated by the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty 's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. By 1830, an estimated 90% of

6350-462: The Burmese language is called Old Burmese , dating to the 11th and 12th century stone inscriptions of Pagan . The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Owing to the linguistic prestige of Old Pyu in the Pagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via

6477-543: The Burmese régime and had not ruled out violating Burmese sovereignty by carrying out "forced airdrops " to deliver aid. On 5 May, US Chargé d'affaires in Myanmar Shari Villarosa declared a disaster due to the effects of Cyclone Nargis. In response, the US Agency for International Development ( USAID ) deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) and immediately provided $ 2 million to UNICEF , WFP , and

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6604-564: The Foundation for the People of Burma had a team on the ground in Rangoon and beyond providing direct assistance to thousands of refugees. Since this organisation was administered by Buddhist volunteers and already had tacit permission from the Burmese government, all donations went directly for supplies. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies had pledged $ 189,000 for relief. The federation had also launched an appeal of

6731-561: The Government had already sent medical supplies valued more than one billion baht ($ 31.3 million) to Myanmar. Furthermore, the Government of Thailand dispatched, upon the permission of the Burmese junta, twenty medical teams and twenty quick communicable disease suppression units. Samak Sundaravej stated that "if Myanmar gives the green light allowing us to help, our Air Force will provide C-130 aircraft to carry our teams there. This should not be precipitately carried out, it has to have

6858-521: The IMD upgraded the system to Cyclonic Storm Nargis, while it was located about 550 km (340 mi) east of Chennai, India. On 28 April, Nargis became nearly stationary, while situated between high-pressure ridges to its northwest and southeast. That same day, the JTWC upgraded the storm to cyclone status, the equivalent of a minimal Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale . Around

6985-588: The Indian Ocean and eastern Africa and a southward displacement over the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The doldrums are notably described in Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and also provide a metaphor for the initial state of boredom and indifference of Milo, the child hero of Norton Juster 's classic 1961 children's novel The Phantom Tollbooth . It

7112-509: The Intertropical Convergence Zone played a role in the loss of Air France Flight 447 , which crashed while flying from Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris . The aircraft crashed with no survivors while flying through a series of large ITCZ thunderstorms, and ice forming rapidly on airspeed sensors was the precipitating cause for a cascade of human errors which ultimately doomed

7239-490: The Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), called anya tha ( အညာသား ) and speakers from Lower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), called auk tha ( အောက်သား ), largely occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor lexical and pronunciation differences exist throughout the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း , "food offering [to

7366-485: The Irrawaddy delta was accepted by the Burmese government. An aircraft carrying the team of doctors was being prepared at Delhi 's Palam Air Force Base . Italy provided €465,000 (about $ 732,282) worth of aid in the form of 30 tons of emergency relief equipment, such as stretchers, generators , and water purifiers in a flight organised by the World Food Program (WFP). The flight arrived in Yangon on 8 May. This

7493-604: The Northern Hemisphere based on results from climate models ; a northward rebound began subsequently following forced changes in the gradient in temperature between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. These fluctuations in ITCZ positioning had robust effects on climate; for instance, displacement of the ITCZ may have led to drought in the Sahel in the 1980s. Atmospheric convection may become stronger and more concentrated at

7620-476: The OB vowel *u e.g. ငံ ngam 'salty', သုံး thóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံး sóum 'end'. It does not, however, apply to ⟨ည်⟩ which is never realised as a nasal, but rather as an open front vowel [iː] [eː] or [ɛː] . The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. It may also allophonically appear as a homorganic nasal before stops. For example, in /mòʊɰ̃dáɪɰ̃/ ('storm'), which

7747-657: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for emergency food, water and sanitation, and shelter assistance. On 6 May, an additional $ 3 million from USAID was allocated for the provision of emergency relief assistance, including $ 1 million to the American Red Cross and $ 2 million for NGO partners and on 12 May, USAID Administrator Henrietta H. Fore announced $ 13 million in food aid and logistics assistance through

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7874-622: The SITCZ, occurs during the Southern Hemisphere fall between 3° and 10° south of the equator east of the 140th meridian west longitude during cool or neutral El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns. When ENSO reaches its warm phase, otherwise known as El Niño, the tongue of lowered sea surface temperatures due to upwelling off the South American continent disappears, which causes this convergence zone to vanish as well. Variation in

8001-508: The Southern Hemisphere Hadley cell. The ITCZ shifted north during the mid-Holocene but migrated south following changes in insolation during the late-Holocene towards its current position. The ITCZ has also undergone periods of contraction and expansion within the last millennium. A southward shift of the ITCZ commencing after the 1950s and continuing into the 1980s may have been associated with cooling induced by aerosols in

8128-1027: The USAID DART stationed in Thailand. On 15 May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched the Burmese HIC website. The purpose of the site was to improve information exchange and collaboration between operational agencies responding to Cyclone Nargis. Based in Bangkok , the HIC was providing support to the Humanitarian Partnership Team and other humanitarian partners in Yangon , as well as those based in Bangkok. By 8 May 2008,

8255-594: The World Food Programme. From 12 to 20 May, USAID and the US Department of Defense (DOD) coordinated the delivery of nearly $ 1.2 million of US relief commodities to Rangoon on 185 DOD C-130 flights. The relief supplies would provide assistance to more than 113,000 beneficiaries. The DOD efforts were under the direction of Joint Task Force Caring Response . As of 26 June 2008, United States assistance had totalled $ 41,169,769 and continued to be directed by

8382-491: The adoption of neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì] , from English university , now တက္ကသိုလ် [tɛʔkət̪ò] , a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila ( တက္ကသီလ Takkasīla ), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan. Some words in Burmese may have many synonyms, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example

8509-467: The afternoon (Bangkok time) of 7 May 2008, the Burmese junta permitted Italian flights containing relief supplies from the United Nations, and twenty-five tonnes of consumable goods, to land in Myanmar. However, many nations and organisations hoped to deliver assistance and relief to Myanmar without delay; most of their officials, supplies and stores were waiting in Thailand and at the Yangon airport, as

8636-563: The announcement included World Vision , the World Food Programme , and the International Rescue Committee . On 23 May, negotiations between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Than Shwe resulted in the opening of Myanmar to aid workers , regardless of nationality. Myanmar's government was still staunchly opposed to the presence of military units in the country, only allowing dedicated relief workers. On 5 June,

8763-420: The cargo was lost. Ten Red Cross/Red Crescent relief flights carrying medical and shelter supplies were due to land in Yangon on 12 May. Trocaire has been active in Myanmar since 1995 and were the first Irish aid agency to gain access after Cyclone Nargis. Relief work has been conducted mainly through local partners and membership of the international federation Caritas Internationalis. Trocaire had appealed for

8890-633: The center of the ITCZ in response to a globally warming climate, resulting in sharpened contrasts in precipitation between the ITCZ core (where precipitation would be amplified) and its edges (where precipitation would be suppressed). Atmospheric reanalyses suggest that the ITCZ over the Pacific has narrowed and intensified since at least 1979, in agreement with data collected by satellites and in-situ precipitation measurements. The drier ITCZ fringes are also associated with an increase in outgoing longwave radiation outward of those areas, particularly over land within

9017-525: The close portions of the diphthongs are somewhat mid-centralized ( [ɪ, ʊ] ) in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɰ̃/ and /ʔ/ . Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically [tɕàʊ̃] . Burmese is a tonal language , which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch , but also phonation , intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese

9144-462: The co-ordination of the international relief effort. Another team from the same department was also on the ground inside Myanmar. The Royal Navy dispatched HMS  Westminster to the area to assist. This ship was part of the Orion 08 group deployment but was detached on a contingency tasking. This mission was codenamed Operation Songster . Prime Minister Gordon Brown remained extremely critical of

9271-544: The country's black market, and Myanmar's junta warned on 15 May that legal action would be taken against people who traded or hoarded international aid. Towards the end of April 2008, the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone over the Indian Ocean became very active, with a tropical disturbance developing under its influence during 25 April. Over the next couple of days, the disturbance gradually developed further within an area of low vertical wind shear , before it

9398-502: The country. Samak Sundaravej , Prime Minister of Thailand , stated that, following the request of Eric G. John , US Ambassador to Thailand, he would visit Myanmar on 11 May to urge the junta to open the country. Quinton Quayle , UK Ambassador to Thailand, later remarked that he would also join Sundaravej. However, the junta immediately replied that it was not willing to welcome anyone at this time. Sundaravej said that he would still submit

9525-408: The country. Staff on the ground were working to distribute food, water and other non-food items while WV Myanmar managers sought approval from the government to work in the worst affected areas and to bring in aid from outside. Local NGOs also responded to the emergency, many adapting from human-rights or women's focuses to humanitarian emergency relief. In the days after the storm, the junta pursued

9652-593: The country. These varieties include the Yaw , Palaw, Myeik (Merguese), Tavoyan and Intha dialects . Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects. Below is a summary of lexical similarity between major Burmese dialects: Dialects in Tanintharyi Region , including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved

9779-482: The cyclone on 29 April, though after beginning a steady eastward motion, Nargis rapidly intensified to attain peak winds of at least 165 km/h (105 mph) on 2 May, according to IMD observations; the JTWC assessed peak winds of 215 km/h (135 mph), making it a weak Category 4 cyclone on the SSHWS . The cyclone moved ashore in the Ayeyarwady Division of Myanmar at peak intensity and, after passing near

9906-453: The cyclone was forecast to strike Bangladesh or southeastern India. Subsequently, the cyclone became disorganised and weakened due to subsidence and drier air; as a result, deep convection near the center markedly decreased. At the same time, the storm began a motion to the northeast, around the periphery of a ridge to its southeast. The circulation remained strong despite the diminishing convection, though satellite intensity estimates using

10033-575: The cyclone-hit country. The two aircraft carried 4 tonnes of relief supplies each while the Indian Navy transported more than 100 tonnes of relief material. On 8 May, the IAF dispatched its third air consignment carrying over 32 tonnes of relief material including tents, blankets and medicines. India planned to send more aid to Burma. In a separate development, Burma denied Indian search and rescue teams and media access to critical cyclone-hit areas. India released

10160-424: The danger that Cyclone Nargis posed 48 hours before it hit the country's coast. Relief efforts were slowed for political reasons as Myanmar's military rulers initially resisted large-scale international aid. US President George W. Bush said that an angry world should condemn the way Myanmar's military rulers were handling the aftermath of such a catastrophic cyclone. Myanmar's military junta finally accepted aid

10287-434: The deaths caused by Nargis and those caused by other cyclones (like the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone ), could put Nargis as the fourth-deadliest or higher, because the exact death toll is uncertain. Nargis was the first tropical cyclone to strike the country since Cyclone Mala made landfall in 2006 , which was slightly stronger, but had a significantly lower impact. According to reports, Indian authorities had warned Myanmar about

10414-647: The early post-independence era led to a reactionary switch from English to Burmese as the national medium of education, a process that was accelerated by the Burmese Way to Socialism . In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission ) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named

10541-402: The eighteenth century named this belt of calm the doldrums because of the calm, stagnant, or inactive winds. Tropical cyclogenesis depends upon low-level vorticity as one of its six requirements, and the ITCZ fills this role as it is a zone of wind change and speed, otherwise known as horizontal wind shear . As the ITCZ migrates to tropical and subtropical latitudes and even beyond during

10668-489: The equator during the Southern Hemisphere warm season, but can be more extratropical in nature, especially east of the International Date Line . It is considered the largest and most important piece of the ITCZ, and has the least dependence upon heating from a nearby land mass during the summer than any other portion of the monsoon trough . The southern ITCZ in the southeast Pacific and southern Atlantic, known as

10795-507: The equator; the ITCZ can then be interpreted as a front along the leading edge of the equatorial air. There appears to be a 15 to 25-day cycle in thunderstorm activity along the ITCZ, which is roughly half the wavelength of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). Within the ITCZ the average winds are slight, unlike the zones north and south of the equator where the trade winds feed. As trans-equator sea voyages became more common, sailors in

10922-425: The final death toll would be over 100,000, while one Save The Children 's aid worker claimed that the death toll from the cyclone and its aftermath might reach 300,000; if correct, Nargis was the second-deadliest cyclone ever and the fifth-deadliest natural disaster since 1900, after the 1931 China floods . Other more deadly natural disasters include the 1887 Yellow River flood , the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake , and

11049-510: The flight. Most aircraft flying these routes are able to avoid the larger convective cells without incident. Based on paleoclimate proxies , the position and intensity of the ITCZ varied in prehistoric times along with changes in global climate . During Heinrich events within the last 100 ka, a southward shift of the ITCZ coincided with the intensification of the Northern Hemisphere Hadley cell coincident with weakening of

11176-472: The focus of humanitarian work in Myanmar not to be lost in the wake of China's more recent earthquake. Save the Children , one of the few agencies allowed to work in Myanmar, said the toll would likely sharply grow in the next few days as help reached isolated areas. On 18 May, it announced that it believed that thirty thousand children younger than five were already facing malnutrition and could starve in under

11303-598: The form of nouns . Historically, Pali , the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism , had a profound influence on Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due to phonotactic similarities between the two languages, alongside the fact that the script used for Burmese can be used to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy. Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science. Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms: Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by

11430-515: The introduction of English into matriculation examinations , fueled growing demand for Burmese to become the medium of education in British Burma; a short-lived but symbolic parallel system of "national schools" that taught in Burmese, was subsequently launched. The role and prominence of the Burmese language in public life and institutions was championed by Burmese nationalists, intertwined with their demands for greater autonomy and independence from

11557-704: The junta as being guilty of inhuman actions. On 19 May, Myanmar agreed to allow aid from members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to enter. The decision came after an emergency ASEAN summit. The aid would start arriving 21 May. Ban Ki-moon would probably visit the country the same day to "accelerate relief efforts". That day, Ban announced that Myanmar was going to "allow all aid workers regardless of nationality" to enter, although ships and helicopters were still not expected to be allowed. The announcement came after Ban had met with junta leader General Than Shwe for over two hours. Organizations welcoming

11684-404: The junta defer voting on the referendum and immediately accept international relief. The Philippine protesters delivered the statement that "this time is not the time for politics, but it is the time to save people." The United States Government also demanded that the United Nations not endorse the referendum. Aung San Suu Kyi , leader of the Burmese opposition, also stated that holding a vote for

11811-515: The literary form, asserting that the spoken vernacular form ought to be used. Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt , a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use

11938-418: The location of the intertropical convergence zone drastically affects rainfall in many equatorial nations, resulting in the wet and dry seasons of the tropics rather than the cold and warm seasons of higher latitudes. Longer term changes in the intertropical convergence zone can result in severe droughts or flooding in nearby areas. In some cases, the ITCZ may become narrow, especially when it moves away from

12065-496: The major city of Yangon (Rangoon), the storm gradually weakened until dissipating near the border of Myanmar and Thailand . Nargis is the deadliest named cyclone in the North Indian Ocean Basin , as well as the second-deadliest named cyclone of all time, behind Typhoon Nina of 1975 . Including unnamed storms like the 1970 Bhola cyclone , Nargis is the fifth-deadliest cyclone of all time, but an uncertainty between

12192-479: The mediating letter to the junta without delay. The delays had attracted international condemnation. Also, on 9 May in Bangkok, Richard Horsey, spokesperson of the United Nations, urged Myanmar to accept a full scale international relief effort. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to allow aid in "without hindrance". Ban's comments came after the World Food Programme resumed food aid after two shipments of high energy biscuits were stolen by

12319-465: The mid-latitudes and the subtropics . This change in the ITCZ is also reflected by increasing salinity within the Atlantic and Pacific underlying the ITCZ fringes and decreasing salinity underlying central belt of the ITCZ. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report indicated "medium agreement" from studies regarding the strengthening and tightening of the ITCZ due to anthropogenic climate change. Less certain are

12446-533: The military was horse-trading aid for physical labour. Despite objections raised by the Burmese opposition parties and foreign nations in the wake of the natural disaster, the junta proceeded with a previously scheduled (10 May 2008) constitutional referendum . Voting however was postponed until 24 May 2008 in Yangon and other areas hardest hit by the storm. On 8 May 2008, about thirty protesters assembled before Myanmar's embassy in Manila , Philippines , demanding that

12573-451: The military. The House of Commons of Canada condemned the Burmese government's response in a resolution passed unanimously on 9 May 2008. Oxfam International's regional chief Sarah Ireland warned that 1.5 million face death if they did not get clean water and sanitation soon: "It's really crucial that people get access to clean water sources and sanitation to avoid unnecessary deaths and suffering." Myanmar's government seemed unaware of

12700-411: The most affected, where more than 3,000 families were displaced. Thousands of houses were flooded, with 21 reported destroyed. The rainfall left 4,500 people homeless, and more than 35,000 people were affected on the island. Three people were reported injured on the island, while two were reported dead. The India Meteorological Department recommended that fishermen should not sail on

12827-565: The ocean during the passage of Nargis. Strong waves and gusty winds were expected along the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh coastline in India. Additionally, the influence of the cyclone lowered temperatures along the Indian coastline, which had been affected by a severe heat wave. When the cyclone was originally expected to strike near Bangladesh , officials requested farmers to hurriedly finish harvesting

12954-465: The permission of their government." On 7 May 2008, those units, with their subordinate aeroplanes, were permitted to land in Yangon, carrying drinking water and construction material. One of the largest sums was donated by the United Kingdom which committed £17 million (approx US$ 33.5 million). The UK's Department for International Development sent an international relief team to help with

13081-636: The population in Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking territory, from the Irrawaddy Delta to upriver in the north, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay), and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking. The language shift has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in

13208-523: The referendum during this disaster would be a consummately unacceptable act. About 500 Burmese activists demonstrated on 10 May outside their country's embassy in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia, demanding that Burma's military regime call off its constitutional referendum even as voting began despite a devastating cyclone. Burmese language Burmese is a tonal , pitch-register , and syllable-timed language , largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with

13335-425: The region. Standardized tone marking in written Burmese was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged. British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers. Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout

13462-519: The regional and global shifts in ITCZ position as a result of climate change, with paleoclimate data and model simulations highlighting contrasts stemming from asymmetries in forcing from aerosols, volcanic activity, and orbital variations , as well as uncertainties associated with changes in monsoons and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation . The climate simulations run as part of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) did not show

13589-477: The respective hemisphere's summer season, increasing Coriolis force makes the formation of tropical cyclones within this zone more possible. Surges of higher pressure from high latitudes can enhance tropical disturbances along its axis. In the north Atlantic and the northeastern Pacific oceans, tropical waves move along the axis of the ITCZ causing an increase in thunderstorm activity, and clusters of thunderstorms can develop under weak vertical wind shear. In

13716-474: The rice crop. At the time, the country was experiencing severe food shortages from Cyclone Sidr in the previous year and flooding earlier in the year, and a direct strike from Nargis would have resulted in destroyed crops due to strong winds. The United Nations estimated that 1.5 million people were "severely affected" by Nargis. It was the deadliest tropical cyclone in the North Indian Ocean since

13843-506: The said pronoun is used only by male speakers while ကျွန်မ , kya.ma. [tɕəma̰] is used by female speakers. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology , Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family, whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not. The Mon language has also influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties,

13970-401: The same time, the IMD upgraded Nargis to a severe cyclonic storm. The cyclone developed a concentric eye feature , which is an eyewall outside another eyewall, with warm waters aiding in further intensification. Early on 29 April, the JTWC estimated Nargis reached winds of 160 km/h (100 mph), and at the same time, the IMD classified the system as a very severe cyclonic storm. Initially,

14097-463: The scope of the death and destruction Cyclone Nargis wrought on the country more than a week ago, it was reported 13 May 2008. Some critics were even suggesting genocide since the Burmese government had deliberately denied storm victims aid, allowing for hundreds of thousands to potentially die from starvation, exposure, and disease. On 16 May 2008, the Burmese UN ambassador accused France of deploying

14224-399: The seasonal cycle is more subtle, as the convection is constrained by the distribution of ocean temperatures. Sometimes, a double ITCZ forms, with one located north and another south of the Equator, one of which is usually stronger than the other. When this occurs, a narrow ridge of high pressure forms between the two convergence zones. The ITCZ is commonly defined as an equatorial zone where

14351-764: The spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms. The following sample sentence reveals that differences between literary and spoken Burmese mostly occur in affixes: Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience into account. The suffix ပါ pa is frequently used after a verb to express politeness. Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect. In many instances, polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third person pronouns or kinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns. Furthermore, with regard to vocabulary choice, spoken Burmese clearly distinguishes

14478-661: The storm. Nargis quickly weakened after turning to the northeast, toward the rugged terrain near the Myanmar–Thailand border, and after deteriorating to minimal tropical storm status, the JTWC issued its last advisory on Nargis. On 27 and 28 April, the cyclone enhanced the South-West Monsoon over Sri Lanka, which resulted in very heavy rain, flooding, and landslides being reported within the Western, Sabaragamuwa and Southern provinces. The districts of Ratnapura and Kegalle were

14605-406: The trade winds converge. Rainfall seasonality is traditionally attributed to the north–south migration of the ITCZ, which follows the sun. Although this is largely valid over the equatorial oceans, the ITCZ and the region of maximum rainfall can be decoupled over the continents. The equatorial precipitation over land is not simply a response to just the surface convergence. Rather, it is modulated by

14732-448: The traditional homeland of Burmese speakers. The 1891 Census of India , conducted five years after the annexation of the entire Konbaung Kingdom , found that the former kingdom had an "unusually high male literacy" rate of 62.5% for Upper Burmans aged 25 and above. For all of British Burma , the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women (by contrast, British India more broadly had a male literacy rate of 8.44%). The expansion of

14859-425: The underlying orthography . From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace's literacy rate , which manifested itself in greater participation of laymen in scribing and composing legal and historical documents, domains that were traditionally the domain of Buddhist monks, and drove the ensuing proliferation of Burmese literature , both in terms of genres and works. During this period,

14986-455: The verb ပေး ('to give') is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct. More distinctive non-standard varieties emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of

15113-459: The wide circulation of legal texts, royal chronicles , and religious texts. A major reason for the uniformity of the Burmese language was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (called kyaung ) in Burmese villages. These kyaung served as the foundation of the pre-colonial monastic education system, which fostered uniformity of the language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley,

15240-410: The word "television", Burmese publications are mandated to use the term ရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit. 'see picture, hear sound') in lieu of တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း , a direct English transliteration. Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English car ) in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of use with

15367-511: Was at $ 12 billion, making Nargis the costliest tropical cyclone on record in the North Indian Ocean at the time, before that record was broken by Cyclone Amphan in 2020 . The first named storm of the 2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season , Nargis developed on 27 April in the central area of Bay of Bengal . Initially, the storm tracked slowly northwestward, and encountering favourable conditions, it quickly strengthened. Dry air weakened

15494-705: Was classified as a depression by the India Meteorological Department early on 27 April. Initially, the depression moved westward and was classified as a deep depression by the IMD, before the United States Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) initiated advisories and classified the storm as Tropical Cyclone 01B later that day. The system subsequently started to move north-westwards under the steering influence of an anticyclone and an upper-level ridge of high pressure. At 0000 UTC, 5:30 AM Indian Standard Time , on 28 April,

15621-941: Was likely the worst disaster in Myanmar's history, and the total damages were comparable to that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami . Thousands of buildings were destroyed; in the town of Labutta , in the Ayeyarwady Division , state television reported that 75 percent of buildings had collapsed and 20 percent had their roofs ripped off. One report indicated that 95 percent of buildings in the Irrawaddy Delta area were destroyed. The Ministry of Religious Affairs stated that 1,163 temples were destroyed in Ayeyarwady Division and 284 in Yangon Division . The Burmese government formally declared five regions— Yangon , Ayeyarwady , Bago Divisions and Mon and Kayin States— as disaster areas . A United Nations official commented as follows: "It's

15748-550: Was reported to have 80,000 dead, with about 10,000 more deaths in Bogale . There were around 55,000 people missing and many other deaths were found in other towns and areas, although the Myanmar government 's official death toll may have been under-reported, and there have been allegations that government officials stopped updating the death toll after 138,000 to minimise political fallout. The feared 'second wave' of fatalities from disease and lack of relief efforts never materialised. Damage

15875-758: Was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Classical Chinese , Pyu , Old Tibetan and Tangut . The majority of Burmese speakers, who live throughout the Irrawaddy River Valley, use a number of largely similar dialects, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in the peripheral areas of the country. These dialects include: Arakanese in Rakhine State and Marma in Bangladesh are also sometimes considered dialects of Burmese and sometimes as separate languages. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there

16002-604: Was the first aid flight from a Western nation, preceded only by aid from Thailand. In addition to this aid, the Italian government provided €500,000 through the WFP and €500,000 through funding to relief agencies through the UN. An additional €123,000 was provided through the Red Cross , as well as €300,000 worth of further financing for emergency equipment. Mercy Malaysia also trained 180 doctors from

16129-523: Was then applied. The ITCZ appears as a band of clouds, usually thunderstorms, that encircle the globe near the Equator. In the Northern Hemisphere , the trade winds move in a southwestward direction from the northeast, while in the Southern Hemisphere , they move northwestward from the southeast. When the ITCZ is positioned north or south of the Equator, these directions change according to

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