Cloudbursts have a disastrous impact on life and property.
With climate change, these events are only going to increase in the future.
Yet, not much known is about cloudbursts.
This causes a hindrance to accurately monitoring and forecasting them.
According to the IMD, 100mm of rain in an hour is called a cloudburst.
They usually occur over a small geographical region of about 20 to 30 sq. km.
Tall, cumulonimbus clouds causing cloudbursts can occur very quickly, in about 30 minutes.
In India, cloudbursts often occur during the monsoon season. They occur mostly over the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, and the northeastern hill States of India.
Satellites fail to detect cloudbursts. This is because the resolution of the precipitation radars is much smaller than the area of individual cloudburst events.
Similarly, monitoring stations on the ground can hardly capture the cloudburst characteristics due to their highly localised and short occurrence.
Multiple weather radars can be used to give timely updates, but they are very expensive.
Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of cloudbursts.
We already see a change in monsoon extremes and cloudbursts.
This is in response to the 1-degree Celsius rise in global surface temperature.
Temperatures are set to hit 1.5°C during 2020-2040 and 2°C during 2040-2060.
