NEW DELHI: Days after cloud burst near the Amarnath cave shrine, the Centre Monday said that there is no science to predict such highly localised events and efforts are on to have more doppler radar systems in place to improve weather monitoring and forecast in the fragile Himalayan regions.
At least 17 people were killed and many are still missing after the flash floods on July 8.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said it was a highly localised extreme rainfall event. As per the IMD, a ‘cloudburst’ is one where there is 100 mm rainfall in just one hour.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M Ravichandran said heavy rainfall events are set to increase not just at Amarnath but in other parts of the country too, owing to the changing climatic conditions.
“We need to observe and understand these types of processes. For that, we don’t have sufficient understanding. Isolated localised heavy rainfall less than a few kms are very difficult to predict, we don’t have science to predict it,” he said.
Ravichandran further said that the ‘extreme’ is maximum; now the ‘extreme’ itself has shifted to ‘further extreme’. “So, we need to define heavy rainfall, extremely heavy rainfall and such various criterion again. The light rains are no more (happening),” he said.
The Amarnath tragedy could have been averted had the doppler radar at Banihal in Jammu and Kashmir been functional. But it has been over two years and there has not been any progress.
A doppler radar gives a more accurate assessment of the clouds and rainfall in the given range of the radar, that is, a 100 kilometre area.
Gives more accurate weather assessment
The Amarnath tragedy could have been averted had the doppler radar at Banihal in J&K been functional. A doppler radar gives a more accurate assessment of the clouds and rainfall in the given range of the radar