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India to give flash flood warning to Asian nations
Why it is in news?
- India has been designated as a nodal centre for preparing flash-flood forecasts by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
- That means India will have to develop a customised model that can issue advance warning of floods in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.
All about flash flood
- A flash flood is a rapid flooding of geomorphic low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and basins.
- Caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, tropical storm, or meltwater from ice or snow flowing over ice sheets or snowfields.
- May occur after the collapse of a natural ice or debris dam, or a human structure such as a man-made dam.
- Flash floods are distinguished from regular floods by having a timescale of less than six hours.
- Occurs when it rains rapidly on saturated soil or dry soil that has poor absorption ability.
- Significant examples-
- 2013: Uttarakhand, Uttarakhand, India: 822 dead
- 2014: Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India: approximately 300 dead.
- 2016: September 20, Garut Regency in Indonesia floods: 33 dead
Six hours before
- IMD would be working to customise a weather model, developed by the United States and donated to the WMO, to warn of flash floods at least six hours in advance.
- A test version of this was being tried out by the IMD, and that was able to give a flood warning about an hour in advance.
- Using a combination of satellite mapping and ground-based observation, this system — called the Flash Flood Guidance System — aims to provide forecasts six hours in advance.
- Like India, several Southeast Asian countries depend on the monsoon and are prone to its vagaries.
- The proposed model would provide forecasts by computing the likelihood of rainfall and the soil moisture levels to warn of possible floods.
- Though Pakistan was among the list of countries that would benefit from the forecast, it had refused to participate in the scheme.
- While the science to warn of floods could be developed, India was yet to work out how exactly it would warn countries of potential inundation.
- India currently has a warning system for tsunamis that also doubles up a warning system for several Asian countries.
- The Central Water Commission, which monitors India’s dams, warns of rising water levels in the reservoirs, which are usually taken to be signs of imminent floods.
- The organisation has recently tied up with Google to develop a software application to visualise rising water levels during heavy rains.
- The WMO says flash floods account for 85% of flooding incidents across the world, causing some 5,000 deaths each year.
Source
The Hindu,Wikipedia