Understanding Monsoon Havoc in Pakistan 2022
Is Climate Change Altering Weather Systems in Pakistan?
Dr. Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar, Islamabad, Pakistan
Ibrar.space@uclmail.net
Climate Change diagnosis is critical to understand, how and why we are facing natural disasters like floods and droughts in Pakistan? Monsoon is most familiar weather system and word in use to our region. Everyone knows that rain will come to feed our underground water channels, dried rivers will be flowing once again, streams will refresh, agricultural crops will have nutrient rich drops of water and our water storage depleted reservoirs will be mouth filled. Who knows that monsoon will add to daily miseries of common people? and eventually they will lose their loved ones, crops, homes and exposed to bare sky. Questions arises that what will happen during monsoon this year? Will it be drought or flood? Who will be responsible? What government will do? Is there enough preparedness of civil departments? and a lot of others things. But fact remains that people of Pakistan always on suffering side.
One of prime missing element is lack of our awareness about climate science and weather. Climate is average occurrence of weather systems during more than 25 to 30 years, while weather is short term conditions of atmosphere over an area. Monsoon refers to weather systems that generate over vast area of sea across the globe and cause rains over the land. It happens in both northern and southern hemispheres as well as in summer and winter season. In Pakistan, we are beneficiary cum sufferers from summer monsoon weather systems originating from Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. What actually happens in South Asian Monsoon is the reversal of wind direction from ocean and bring a lot of moisture flux towards land areas of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. On set of Monsoon weather systems is approx. early May that moves slowly towards west and starts entering Pakistan by late June every year. Its seems so simple as this is happening since centuries in our region but un-predictability has increased over last century due to climate change phenomena.
Let’s for understanding, earth is composed of four major spheres i.e., Lithosphere, Hydrosphere, Troposphere and Biosphere. Life is striving in the Biosphere which is overlapping sphere among other three spheres. Lithosphere is related to earth soil, Hydrosphere is life in water and Troposphere is earth atmosphere which support life on earth by holding oxygen, winds, clouds and protecting us from Sun. We human beings have significantly altered the balance of three sphere through industrialization, population growth, injudicious reliance on fossils fuels and long list by which we have not only put our survival on stake but also billion of creatures on the planet. In my opinion, Climate change is an earth disease while humans are playing role as a parasite that affecting all vitals of earth system. Putting impurities of CO2, NOx, SOx, dust, Methane and other pollutants into all spheres. These are continuously changing earth systems above us by altering atmospheric chemistry, thermal gradients and other factors that control the generation, extinctions, movements, directions, intensity of weather systems.
Generally, Pakistan has two major weather systems i.e., winter weather systems and summer weather systems. Winter weathers penetrate north, north western, western and south western areas of Pakistan in Gilgit Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Baluchistan and North Central Punjab. These weather systems are controlled by the western winds originating from Atlantic Ocean travelled through European and Russian lands. While, summer weather systems prevailed across plains of Punjab and Sindh provinces and are more controlled by Pacific and Indian oceans.
Interestingly, Pakistan is situated on the meteorological strategic location where both of these weather systems are altering its behavior due to global climate change. There is no precise evidence that when climate change started to alter the behavior of summer monsoon but Pakistan has witness the outcome in the form of 2010 super flood. It seems the last decade might be the time of transition that lead to floods in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Its matter of realization that 2010 flood is first of such example in which summer monsoon and western weather system interacted with each other on Pakistan Monsoon epicenter over Indus basin. This interaction caused extreme event of torrential rains and later it was diagnosed to be linked with Russian heatwave.
Current season of monsoon 2022, most probably is the result the altered behavior due to record European heatwave, short spring season in Pakistan which resulted into blockage of western weather system that keep pushing monsoon currents towards eastern parts of Punjab. Floods of southern Pakistan is no doubt observed as greatest anomaly of summer monsoon in Pakistan that has entered into western areas of Balochistan. As a climatologist, I am of the view that Pakistan has truly entered into climate emergency as if such alteration in weather systems become permanent, will definitely lead to food, water and life security issues in rural as well as urban area in years to come.
We can do nothing with these altered weather systems as a resultant to climate change but to focus on building climate resilient nation.
Some of possible way outs are urgent need of climate research in Pakistan, establishment of climate modeling center, design and development of meteorological satellites, use of satellite technology for effective emergency response, strengthen of meteorological stations network by PMD and free access to data in Pakistan, adoption of clean energy technologies, improvement of flood protection infrastructures, declaration of high disasters prune areas, awareness of society to transformed into resilient society, enhancing of green areas and sustainable climate change resilient policy implementation system across country with least political interventions. Another doable option is to promote the “Citizen science a missing link” where each individual can become a scientist by providing a raw information required by a decision support system.
References:
[1] Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar. 2015. Pakistan needs a fresh disaster mitigation strategy. http://www.scidev.net/global/disasters/opinion/pakistan-disaster-mitigation-strategy.html
[2] Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar. 2017. Managing Urban Flooding. https://tribune.com.pk/story/1502156/managing-urban-flooding
The views expressed in this article are his and do not reflect the official view of his organization.
