‘Cloudburst a result of global warming’

Was the Leh cloudburst a result of the global warming? Scientists at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM),Pune,think it was.

“The normal average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere is 15 degree Celsius. However,it has now gone up to 15.7 degree Celsius. As a result low pressure areas shifted to North-West which helped monsoon winds reach Leh,which generally gets very low rainfall even compared to dry places in Rajasthan,” said Nityanand Singh,a senior scientist at IITM. And the mixing of cool dry continental polar air coming from north with the warm moist tropical monsoon air coming from south resulted in the cloudburst,which caused the flash floods that killed 165 people,he said .

“If we go a few thousand years back,such extreme phenomena were observed when the average temperature of the hemisphere had gone up to 16 degree Celsius,” Singh said.

Pointing to the extreme weather being experienced by Pakistan,China,Tibet,Manchuria and other countries this year,he added,“These extreme phenomena are a result of the impact of global warming on monsoon rainfall in South-East Asia.”