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Unnatural Disaster: How Global Warming Helped Cause India’s Catastrophic Flood

June 24, 2015

Unnatural Disaster: How Global Warming Helped Cause India’s Catastrophic Flood

The flood that swept through the Indian state of Uttarakhand two years ago killed thousands of people and was one of the worst disasters in the nation’s recent history. Now researchers are saying that melting glaciers and shifting storm tracks played a major role in the catastrophe and should be a warning about how global warming could lead to more damaging floods in the future.

Two years ago this month, a flood devastated the Himalayan village of Kedarnath, India, the destination of half a million Hindu pilgrims annually. The town sits 11,500 feet up in a tight valley. Sharp, snowy peaks tower on three sides and a stone temple sits at one end. The flood — which occurred on June 17, 2013 — was India’s worst disaster in a decade. Several thousand people drowned. The deluge tore apart dozens of bridges, swept away miles of paved roads, and carried off herds of livestock. 

Government officials, scientific researchers, and media commentators soon speculated about the cause of the flood and about why so many people had died. They pointed to the early and heavy monsoon rains. They railed against poorly built homes, unregulated development along the Mandakini River that runs through Kedarnath, and soil erosion caused by thousands of pilgrims trekking on foot and on donkeys to reach this remote town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

All these factors contributed. Yet in the two years since the flood, scientists studying with the care and intensity of forensic investigators have added another key cause: global warming. In recent papers, they conclude that melting glaciers and shifting storm tracks may soon set off more catastrophic floods in mountainous regions of India and adjacent countries. Atmospheric scientists say that in northern India the intense rains that preceded the disaster are extremely rare. 

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