Climate Change and Extreme Rainfall
Wayanad witnessed unprecedented rainfall and landslides in the year 2018 and 2019. In the year 2019, 17 people lost their lives at a massive land slide at Puthumala in Wayanad the landslide that occurred in 2018, at Melmuri in. Wayanad large areas of property and houses were lost due to excessive rainfall.
Hume Centre immediately collected data from these places and done a preliminary analysis. The analysis shows that these two regions received extreme rainfall prior to the landslide. Melmuri region received 4664 mm rainfall in the year 2018 where as the decadal average is 2474 mm an excess of 2190 mm!. There is also increase in the per day rainfall . . All these data shows that on the whole extreme rainfall is increasing in the region and that leads to landslides.
Predicting Rainfall on Local Scale.
To address this issue from a scientific and technical side, Hume Centre initiated pilot pilot regional weather prediction system for Wayanad district in collaboration with Cochin University of Science and Technology(CUSAT).
In this initiative Hume centre in collaboration with CUSAT collected various meteorological data from satellite imageries and global databases and try to do local level prediction enabling to give early warning about land slides to people of Wayanad. We used 4x 4 km square prediction data where as IMD is currently providing only district wise data which are inaccurate to identify regional variation in Rain fall.
We also collecting actual rainfall data from existing rainguages established in various estates of Wayanad. This helped identify the difference between actual and predicted data so that prediction system can be modified to provide more accurate data.
We provided these prediction information to a group of farmers and key decision makers including district collector and was very useful during the extreme rainfall occurred during the monsoon of 2020. The warning system we provided were used by district administration to evacuate people from potential landslide locations. Currently we are forecasting daily rainfall, daily maximum temperature and daily minimum temperature.
Highlights
1. More than 200 days of daily weather forecasting
2. Rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature
3. Multi institutional partnership
4. Citizen science mode
5. Daily Rainfall data collection from 55 locations
Expected Results and Impacts
1. Rainfall predicted at local scale enabling local people to get knowledge about intense rainfall
2. Advanced information on extreme rain fall helped district administration to relocate people for landslide susceptibility areas.
3. Saving people’s lives from extreme natural disasters by imparting accurate weather data
4. Developing a micro-level weather prediction model for Kerala
5. Enabling data-based decision making process for district administration
4. Creating local expertise on weather monitoring system.
5. Networking between various panchayath and departments