Islamabad (AP) – Cloud explosions cause chaos in the mountainous parts of India and Pakistan, with huge amounts of rain falling in a short time on a concentrated area. THE Intense and sudden floods have proven fatal in both countries.
Up to 300 people died In a Pakistani district of the northwest, Buner, after a cloud. The resistance and volume of the rain sparked sudden floods, landslides and mud flows. Arupted slopes rocks collapsed with water to flatten the houses and reduce the villages into rubble.
THE State of northern Uttarakhand India had a Cloudburst earlier this month. Local television has shown flood waters that descend a mountain and crash in Dharali, a Himalayan village. In 2013, more than 6,000 people died and 4,500 villages were affected when a similar Cloudburst struck the state.
Here’s what you need to know about cloudbursts:
These are complex and extreme weather events
An explosion of clouds occurs when a large volume of rain falls in a very short period, generally more than 100 millimeters (about 4 inches) in an hour in a localized area, approximately 30 square kilometers (11.6 square miles).
The explosions of clouds are sudden and violent, with devastating consequences and generalized destruction, and can be the equivalent of several hours of normal or more precipitation. The event is the bursting of a cloud and the discharge of its content at the same time, like a rain bomb.
Several factors contribute to an explosion of clouds, including hot and humid air increasing upwards, high humidity, low pressure, instability and formation of convective clouds.
The wet air is forced to get up after meeting a hill or a mountain. This growing air cools and condenses. Clouds which are large, dense and capable of heavy rain.
The hills or mountains act like barriers and often trap these clouds, so that they cannot disperse or move easily. Strong ascendant currents keep moisture in suspension inside the clouds, delaying precipitation.
When the clouds can no longer hold the accumulated humidity, they break out and release while at the same time.
India and Pakistan have ideal conditions
The explosions of clouds thrive in humidity, monsoon and the mountains. The regions of India and Pakistan are all three, which makes them vulnerable to these extreme meteorological events.
The Himalayan, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges are home to the world’s highest and most famous summits, covering several countries, including India and Pakistan.
The frequency of cloud explosions in these two South Asian nations has increased regularly due to a warming atmosphere, because a warmer air mass can contain more humidity, creating conditions for sudden and intense showers.
The South Asian region has traditionally experienced two seasons of monsoon. We generally last from June to September, with rains moving southwest to the northeast. The other, from around October to December, moves in the opposite direction.
But with more warming gas in the air in the air, the rain is now only loose.
Indeed, the warmer air can contain more humidity from the Oman Sea and the Indian Ocean, and this rain then tends to be spilled at the same time. This means that the monsoon is punctuated by intense floods and drought spells, rather than sustained rain everywhere.
The combination of humidity, mountains and monsoons increases these winds loaded with humidity, triggering sudden condensation and cloud explosions.
They are difficult to predict, but the precaution is possible
It is difficult to predict cloud explosions due to their size, duration, suddenness and complex atmospheric mechanisms.
Asfandyar Khan Khattak, a Pakistani official in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that there was “no forecast system anywhere in the world” which could predict the exact time and location of a cloud.
The Pakistani government said that when an early alert system was in place in the Buner district, where hundreds of people died after a Cloudburst, the showers were so sudden and intense that it struck before the residents could be alerted.
The Sost community organization, which is also the name of a border village in the north of Pakistan Gilgit-Baltistan, says that precautions are possible.
He advises people to avoid building houses right next to the rivers and valleys, to postpone any trip to hilly areas if heavy rains are planned, to keep an emergency kit ready and to avoid traveling on mountainous roads for heavy rains or at night.
It recommends afforestation to reduce surface runoff and improve water absorption, as well as regular releases and widening of banks and drainage canals.
Climate change fuels their frequency
Experts say that cloud explosions have increased in recent years, partly due to climate change, while damage caused by associated storms have also increased due to unforeseen development in mountain areas.
Climate change has directly amplified the triggers of clouds in Pakistan, in particular. Each increase of 1 ° C allows air to contain about 7% more humidity, increasing the potential of strong precipitation in short gusts.
The warming of the Indian Ocean and the Oman Sea pushes more humidity in the atmosphere. The melting of the glaciers and the snow changes the local weather conditions, which makes events of precipitation more erratic and extreme. The environmental degradation, in the form of deforestation and loss of wetlands, reduces the capacity of the terrain to absorb water, by enlarging sudden floods.
Climate change was a central engine of destruction observed in areas in northern Pakistan.
“The increase in global temperatures has supervised the hydrological cycle, leading to more intense and erratic precipitation,” said Khalid Khan, former special secretary for climate change in Pakistan and the president of the climate initiative.
“In our northern regions, warming accelerates the melting of glaciers, adds excessive humidity to the atmosphere and destabilizes the mountains. In short, climate change makes rare events more frequent and frequent events more destructive. ”
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The editors of the Associated Press, Mnir Ahmed and Riaz Khan, contributed to this report from Islamabad and Peshawar, Pakistan, respectively.
