What are cloudburks and why could a warming world make it even more dangerous?

Sudden and intensive outbreaks of extreme rainfall lead to devastation over mountainous parts of South Asia, which caused falling floods, fatal mud rans and huge landslides, washed out entire neighborhoods and turned lively communities into bunch of mud and rubble.

In the northwest of Pakistan, wild floods have crashed by villages and at least 321 people killed within 48 hours, the local authorities reported on Saturday.

More than ten villages in the Buner region of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were destroyed by flood floods, and it is assumed that dozens of people are still caught under the thick mud and rubble.

Kashmir was administered in India in India, at least 60 people were killed and more than 200 was missing when the news agency of the Reuters raved through the Himalaya city of Chashoti on Friday. At the beginning of this month, another increase in floods through a village in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand tore through a village and left at least four people dead.

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The local authorities in both countries said that a large part of the fatal floods and landslides were triggered by sudden and violent seizures of violent rain as cloud burge.

Scientists say that these extreme rainpisodes, be it clouds or longer periods with violent rainfalls, become more frequent and wild in this ecologically fragile region when the climate crisis intensifies.

Here is what to know.

What is a cloud burst?

Cloudburks are sudden, highly localized downpours, which are destroyed by the mere water volume, which they unleash in a short time, and often trigger dangerous floods and landslides.

They appear in mountainous regions, especially during monsoon, when there is a lot of moisture in the air. The areas that have been flooded by destructive rains and floods in the past few weeks are located in the foothills of the huge mountain areas in South Asia, in which the highest peaks and glaciers in the world are located.

The monsoon air hits this mountains and quickly cools down as it rises to dense clouds and condenses, which can then release Torrents.

The Indian meteorological department defines a cloud burst with a precipitation rate of over 100 mm per hour.

“Due to their steep slopes, fragile geology and tight valleys, the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush are particularly vulnerable to destructive streams,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at the Indian Institute for Tropical Meteology.

The residents of Pakistan’s hard -hit Salarzai described a stream of mud and massive boulders that shook the soil like an earthquake.

Why are you so devastating?

These extreme, localized rain outbreaks are difficult to forecast.

“This is also a region of the data savings, regardless of whether we examine cloudburks or bracers to understand, monitor and predict these events,” said Koll.

“The storms are too small and quickly for a precise prediction.”

The high level of poverty in the region, a lack of infrastructure and access to basic institutions are also obstacles to communication, which small information is available to the communities there.

“The larger gap is not the technological gap, but the communication gap,” said the climate expert Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, based in Islamabad.

“Weaker government and lack of early warning systems” in these regions tightened the problem, he added.

Together with the rampant design and unplanned development, it is a fatal combination.

“Due to the very heavy deforestation, every heavy rain and cloud burst will lead to lands on and lead sludge avalanches, they will bring boulders and wood with you,” said Sheikh.

There are often severe losses because “a very high percentage of people live along the waters and the preparation time is extremely limited,” he said.

How does the climate crisis worsen extreme rain?

Cloudshears in the region have occurred with greater intensity and frequency in recent years, which have been driven by the global record temperatures.

The warmer air absorbs water like a sponge, and all of this additional moisture can lead to extreme rain and sudden rains such as clouds, especially when this air hits the mountains.

“Warmer oceans load the monsoon with additional moisture, and a warmer atmosphere contains more water, which raises intensive rainfall when moist air is imposed steep mountain slopes,” said Koll from the Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology.

During the southwest monsoon, annual rainfalls in parts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have brought through winds from the Indian Ocean and the Arab Sea, which have gone through rapid warming in recent years.

Before this year’s floods, longer heat waves had baked the region.

“For every degree that is higher than the average temperature, there is 7% greater moisture in the air,” said Sheikh.

“If there is a stronger heat wave in the South Asian subcontinent, in India or Pakistan, we can assume that the precipitation becomes heavier.”

And melting glaciers only contribute to the disaster.

The massive areas of the Himalaya and the Karakoram region house thousands of glaciers that melt in heating the world and lose the fair with increasingly faster speed.

“While the melting of the glacier does not directly cause cloudburks, unstable lakes and fragile terrain are created that can make their effects from flooding and landslide,” said Koll.

How has climate change already affected the region?

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s world -quality gases, as the data of the European Union show, but, according to the global climate deficiency, is the most at risk of the climate crisis in the climate crisis.

Climate change has already changed the region’s landscape.

“The monsoon itself shifts under climate change, with longer drying magic being interrupted by short, extreme rain schools – patterns that have tripled strong precipitation events across India in recent decades,” said Koll.

Pakistan has recently suffered its most devastating monsoon in 2022, when widespread floods killed almost 2,000 people, driven out thousands and caused an estimated 40 billion US dollars.

Since then, fatal floods have taken place every year. A recently carried out study showed that the precipitation that hit Pakistan between June and July this year was heavier due to the climate crisis.

In Pakistan, the timing, the location and the amount of monsoon rain has shifted so that this “average rainfall seems to have decreased in Pakistan, but the frequency of heavy rainfall has increased,” said Sheikh.

Dürre and floods can influence the country in the same month during the monsoon, so that water availability in a country that already suffers in a severe water crisis becomes more uncertain. “This affects our nutritional security and our cultivation patterns,” said Sheikh.

The devastation and financial tribute due to the floods in Pakistan, India and Nepal this year are the climate crisis at around 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming since industrialization.

But the world is about 3 degrees Celsius on the right track by the end of the century, since people continue to homice fossil fuels on planets. And scientists warn that every fraction of a certain degree of warming worsens the effects of the crisis.

Call the countries to contract

The Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush regions comprise eight countries and extreme weather events in another have an impact in another.

It is “super critical” for the governments of this South Asian nations to come together, said Sheikh.

“We are exposed to the same problems and there are similar solutions,” he said.

“But our ability to learn from each other and to learn the scientific knowledge of the other, the common knowledge is absolutely disabled. And that is very harmful to us.”

But the relationships between Pakistan and India have already deteriorated to their lowest levels in May when both sides escalated a long -term conflict in Kashmir, which caused India to suspend a key contract that rules the parts of the water of the Indus that flows through both countries.

“That is why the Indus water contract needs another life contract to tackle aspiring climate threats and challenges in the water sector,” he said.

The structure of resilience is crucial for the millions of people who live downstream in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

This means “avoidance of settlements, construction and mining areas in danger zones, the enforcement of the climate-resistant infrastructure and strengthening early warning systems,” said Koll.

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