Warming of Arabian Sea linked to Wayanad landslides: Climate scientist

Warming of the Arabian Sea is allowing the formation of deep cloud systems, leading to extremely heavy rainfall in Kerala in a shorter period and increasing the possibility of landslides, a senior climate scientist said on Tuesday.

S Abhilash, the director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) said Kasargod, Kannur, Wayanad, Calicut, and Malappuram districts have been receiving copious rainfall due to the active monsoon offshore trough affecting the entire Konkan region for the last two weeks.

The soil was saturated after two weeks of rainfall. A deep mesoscale cloud system formed off the coast in the Arabian Sea on Monday and led to extremely heavy rain in Wayanad, Calicut, Malappuram, and Kannur, resulting in localised landslides, he told PTI.

"The clouds were very deep, similar to those seen during the 2019 Kerala floods," Abhilash said.

He said scientists have noticed a trend of very deep cloud systems developing over the southeast Arabian Sea, he said, adding that sometimes, these systems intrude into the land, like that in 2019.

"Our research found that the southeast Arabian Sea is becoming warmer, causing the atmosphere above this region, including Kerala, to become thermodynamically unstable," Abhilash said.

"This atmospheric instability, allowing the formation of deep clouds, is linked to climate change. Earlier, this kind of rainfall was more common in the northern Konkan belt, north of Mangalore." With climate change, that rain-bearing belt with deep clouds is extending southward and this is the main reason behind such extremely heavy rainfall, he added.