BY Lanre Olagunju
A video on social media has been wrongly captioned as Cyclone Biparjoy.
The Twitter video showing a twister hurtling over a seascape was posted on June 14. It gathered over 79.4k views.
“Scary video of #CycloneBiparjoy moving towards Karachi. Cyclone Biparjoy is forming at an alarming level,” reads the caption of the Twitter post.
CYCLONE BIPARJOY
Tropical Cyclone Biparjoy hit the northeastern Arabian sea, towards southern Pakistan and western India in June, with winds as high as 160 kph and a surge of 195 kph.
According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, at landfall, Biparjoy was equivalent to a strong tropical storm with winds of 100 kph. The cyclone unleashed powerful gusts of wind that ripped up trees and toppled electricity poles.
Aside from the storm, as expected, flooding was the most significant impact on millions of people when the cyclone made landfall along West Indian and South Pakistan coasts.
In 2021, studies published by researchers at the Shenzhen Institute of Meteorological Innovation and the Chinese University of Hong Kong revealed that Asia’s tropical cyclones could double in destructive power by the end of the century. The studies added that the cyclones draw strength from the human-made climate crisis.
ANIMATION PRODUCED IN 2022, NOT RELATED TO CYCLONE BIPARJOY
Keyframes analysis of the video revealed that the footage was earlier published on a YouTube channel, Tsarovvideo, in August 2022 – ten months before Cyclone Biparjoy.
A scan through the YouTube handle shows that Tsarovvideo has posted multiple animated clips of natural disasters and other severe weather conditions.
VERDICT
The claim that the video shows Cyclone Biparjoy which affected western India and Pakistan is misleading. The video is a computer-generated image, which has been on the internet as far back as August 2022, 10 months before Cyclone Biparjoy.
This content was produced with support from the Independent Media Response Fund, an initiative of the Check Global Program at Meedan to respond to global challenges through hyperlocal initiatives. The fund is supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
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