Atmospheric Rivers caused 70% of floods between 1985-2020, says study

The devastating floods that occurred in the country between 1985 and 2020 during the summer monsoon season were directly associated with Atmospheric Rivers, a phenomenon of a stream of water vapour moving in the sky like a river flowing on the land, says a new study.

It says severe weather events like the 2013 Uttarakhand floods and the 2018 floods in Kerala that claimed several lives were all due to severe Atmospheric Rivers (ARs).

The study, jointly conducted by climate scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, and the University of Washington, says a warming climate is increasing the moisture-holding capacity of Atmospheric Rivers, which leads to concerns about more devastating floods in the future.

"We examined landfalling ARs during the summer monsoon, which has implications for water resources and deleterious flood hazards in India since they can deliver enormous amounts of precipitation within a few .