Sum Of All Fears

The first fortnight of July saw a breach of climate records of thousands of years, clearly showing that the global climate crisis is now a cataclysm. A report by KIRAN PANDEY, AKSHIT SANGOMLA, ARYA RAJU, ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, RAJU SAJWAN and PULAHA ROY DELHI

- KIRAN PANDEY, AKSHIT SANGOMLA, ARYA RAJU, ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, RAJU SAJWAN and PULAHA ROY

IF NORMS are broken regularly, they become the new normal. The first fortnight of July set a new normal for the planet’s climate, as records got broken with alarming regularity across continents, impacting over two-thirds of the world population. In some cases, the new records also got broken within hours.

In India, the first sign of it was seen in the northern region around July 6. A western disturbance—a low pressure area that originates in the Mediterranean region and moves towards India—interacted with a monsoon low—a low pressure area the likes of which are the principal rain-bearing systems of India's southwest monsoon. A western disturbance in July is rare because they mostly form in winters; and rarer is its interaction with a monsoon low pressure system. “According to our database, WDs [western disturbances] in July are about 10 per cent as common than during their peak in December/January,” Kieran Hunt, Research Fellow in Tropical and Himalayan Meteorology, University of Reading, UK, tells Down To Earth (dte). The observed frequency of such interactions during July is around half of that in June, says Akshay Deoras, research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK. Hunt says climate change is increasing the frequency of western disturbances in May and June, making its rare interaction with a monsoon low pressure system more frequent. This interaction results in extreme rainfall and cloudbursts, causing flash floods and massive landslides. A decade ago, a similar interaction triggered the catastrophic Uttarakhand floods in June that killed over 5,000 people and destroyed infrastructure in the hills. It was the worst flood to hit the Himalayan state.