Recent years, especially the last decade has been marked with extreme weather phenomenon. This is more frequent in the Himalayan regions of Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and some parts of northeast India. While most of these events are a result of changing climate, some of them are attributed to local weather phenomenon and other human factors like tunneling, unplanned road cutting, stone mining, deforestation, and construction.
Landslides have killed more than 30 people and hundreds of people have been reported missing in heavy rain incidents. Extreme weather phenomenon has become more frequent from the last decade (as many as 5,000 people died in the Uttarakhand floods in 2013). Data suggests that heavy rains and cloudbursts are triggered as an indirect result of climate change and the warming up of the oceans.
What is a cloudburst?
A cloudburst is any precipitation exceeding 100mm (10cm) rainfall within an hour’s duration in a geographical area of 20-30 square km. However, several experts think that the lower limit is too high in this definition. NR Deshpande of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM, Pune) calls rainfall in the 50-100 mm range within a 2-hour duration as a ‘mini cloudburst.’ According to his research, the west coast, central India, and the Himalayan region witnessed several cloudbursts between June and August 2021.
As per the information gathered from various news sources, there were more than 26 major cloudbursts in the Himalayan region between January and July in 2021. Studies on cloudbursts ascertain that they are most frequent during the months of July-August, which is the monsoon period in the Indian subcontinent.
What are the reasons?
The primary reason is climate change and overall global warming due to increased emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. Other secondary reasons are the indirect or direct impacts of climate change. Due to the warming of oceans, moisture-rich air reaches the Himalayan region. Here it forms vertical columns of clouds (Cumulonimbus clouds). These clouds cause heavy rain, accompanied by lightning and thunder. The upward movement of moisture-rich air is called an ‘orographic lift.’ In the absence of a strong wind to disperse these clouds, cloudbursts happen to lead to heavy rain and thus landslides and other rain-related incidents.
Prof. Ravi Shankar, director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology confirms that most climate models agree that extreme rainfall events during the monsoon will increase as long as we don’t control climate change.
Predicting Cloudbursts
Subimal Ghosh from the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Bombay believes that it is extremely challenging to model and predict a cloudburst. He and his team have been researching the Indian monsoon and hydro-climatic extremes.
He explains this using an interesting ‘popcorn’ model. While making popcorn, corn pops as the utensil heats up and reaches a critical temperature. It is near impossible to predict which corn will pop first. Further, what we can predict is how much corn will pop in the next 2 minutes, say about 90%. However, it is again difficult to say how much shall pop after 10seconds.
Mr. Ghosh adds that to make such predictions we need finer resolutions and a finer timescale. For cloudbursts, it is extremely difficult to simulate the intensity or the location due to the short duration of time.
Earth Sciences minister Jitendra Singh has announced new sites for the installation of Doppler radars to make the network denser for effective predictive and warning of incoming cloudbursts.
Few steps that can be taken to reduce such events include afforestation (to prevent landslides), reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and controlling human accelerators like mining, blasting, tunneling, road-cutting, and construction activities that destabilize the hills. Rainfall in the last 20 days of July was a whupping 110% above the normal. As the triggers for such events are amplifying by pollution and GHG emissions, these extreme weather phenomena are expanding to other regions. In 2021, heavy rain caused flooding in Bihar, West Bengal, and large parts of northeast India.
Further reading:
Mayank has been involved in knowledge product development and writes on contemporary topics including climate change, global warming, and wellbeing. Being a professional web content writer, he is certified web content writer. Mayank, in the past, has worked as an SEO writer and had also worked in the editorial team of a national TV Channel’s newsroom.
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