Abstract
Cloudburst is a transient phenomenon, where intense rainfall occurs in a localised area in a very short period, resulting in catastrophic effects like landslides and floods. The Western Himalayas region is found to be more vulnerable to cloudburst events. In this paper, the robustness of the alerts provided by the nowcasting model NETRA (Nowcasting of Extreme Orographic Rain) has been evaluated for the Uttarakhand Region. These alerts are routinely provided over Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) web portal www.mosdac.gov.in. It was found that the alerts generated from NETRA compare very well with actual events with district-level accuracy. The results also indicate that May month is more vulnerable to cloudburst events. From the perspective of location, the districts of Chamoli, Rudra Prayag, and Uttarkashi are found to be the most vulnerable. Among all districts, NETRA gave the best location accuracy for the district of Uttarkashi. Moreover, Apriori-based analysis is used to find the co-occurrence patterns in a cloudburst. The co-occurrence analysis brings out the spatial linkage between districts concerning cloudburst. We find out that Pauri and Uttarkashi exhibit the maximum co-occurrence probability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agrawal R and Srikant R 1994 Fast algorithms for mining association rules; Proc. 20th Int. Conf. Very Large Databases 1215 487–499.
Bhan S C, Paul S and Kharbanda K L 2004 Cloud bursts in Himachal Pradesh; Mausam 55(4) 712–713.
Bookhagen B and Burbank D W 2010 Toward a complete Himalayan hydrological budget: Spatiotemporal distribution of snowmelt and rainfall and their impact on river discharge; J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf. 115(F3) 1–25, https://doi.org/10.1029/2009JF001426.
Das L and Meher J K 2019 Drivers of climate over the Western Himalayan region of India: A review; Earth Sci. Rev. 198 102935, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.102935.
Das P K 2015 Global warming, glacial lakes and cloud burst events in Garhwal-Kumaon Himalaya: A hypothetical analysis; Int. J. Environ. Sci. 5(4) 697–708.
Das S, Ashrit R and Moncrieff M W 2006 Simulation of a Himalayan cloudburst event; J. Earth Syst. Sci. 115 299–313, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02702044.
Deshpande N R, Kothawale D R, Kumar V and Kulkarni J R 2018 Statistical characteristics of cloud burst and mini‐cloud burst events during monsoon season in India; Int. J. Climatol. 38(11) 4172–4188, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5560.
Dimri A P, Chevuturi A, Niyogi D, Thayyen R J, Ray K, Tripathi S N, Pandey A K and Mohanty U C 2017 Cloudbursts in Indian Himalayas: A review; Earth Sci. Rev. 168 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2017.03.006.
Gautam R, Hsu N C, Lau K M, Tsay S C and Kafatos M 2009 Enhanced pre-monsoon warming over the Himalayan-Gangetic region from 1979 to 2007; Geophys. Res. Lett. 36(7) 1–5, https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL037641.
Gupta P and Uniyal S 2012 Landslides and flash floods caused by extreme rainfall events/cloudbursts in Uttarkashi District of Uttarakhand; J. South Asian Disaster Stud. 5 77–92.
Jena P, Garg S and Azad S 2020 Performance analysis of IMD high-resolution gridded rainfall (0.25°× 0.25°) and satellite estimates for detecting cloudburst events over the northwest Himalayas; J. Hydrometeorol. 21(7) 1549–1569, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-19-0287.1.
Knös D, Karagiorgos K, Haas J, Blumenthal B, Nyberg L and Halldin S 2022 Cloudburst-disaster modelling. A new open-source catastrophe model; Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 67 102679, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102679.
Kumar A, Gupta A K, Bhambri R, Verma A, Tiwari S K and Asthana A K L 2018 Assessment and review of hydrometeorological aspects for cloudburst and flash flood events in the third pole region (Indian Himalaya); Polar Sci. 18 5–20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polar.2018.08.004.
Kumar V G, Jain K and Gairola A 2013 A study and simulation of cloudburst event over Uttarkashi region using river tool and geomatic techniques; J. Soft Comput. Eng. 3 121–126.
Lau K M, Kim M K and Kim K M 2006 Asian summer monsoon anomalies induced by aerosol direct forcing: the role of the Tibetan Plateau; Clim. Dyn. 26 855–864, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-006-0114-z.
Lee S and Min K 2001 Statistical analysis of landslide susceptibility at Yongin, Korea; Environ. Geol. 40(9) 1095–1113.
Medina S, Houze R A Jr, Kumar A and Niyogi D 2010 Summer monsoon convection in the Himalayan region: Terrain and land cover effects; Q. J. Roy. Meteorol. 136(648) 593–616, https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.601.
Mishra M and Sarkar T 2020 A multistage hybrid model for landslide risk mapping: Tested in and around Mussoorie in Uttarakhand state of India; Environ. Earth Sci. 79(19) 449, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-020-09180-3.
Mishra P K, Thayyen R J, Singh H, Das S, Nema M K and Kumar P 2022 Assessment of cloudbursts, extreme rainfall and vulnerable regions in the Upper Ganga basin, Uttarakhand, India; Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 69 102744, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102744.
Prasad A K and Singh R P 2007 Comparison of MISR-MODIS aerosol optical depth over the Indo-Gangetic basin during the winter and summer seasons (2000–2005); Remote Sens. Environ. 107(1–2) 109–119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2006.09.026.
Pratap S, Srivastava P K, Routray A, Islam T and Mall R K 2020 Appraisal of hydro-meteorological factors during extreme precipitation event: Case study of Kedarnath cloudburst, Uttarakhand, India; Nat. Hazards 100 635–654, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03829-4.
Romatschke U and Houze R A Jr 2011 Characteristics of precipitating convective systems in the pre-monsoon season of South Asia; J. Hydrometeorol. 12(2) 157–180, https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JHM1311.1.
Shrestha A B and Aryal R 2011 Climate change in Nepal and its impact on Himalayan glaciers; Reg. Environ. Change. 11 65–77, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-010-0174-9.
Shrestha P, Dimri A P, Schomburg A and Simmer C 2015 Improved understanding of an extreme rainfall event at the Himalayan foothills – a case study using COSMO; Tellus a: Dyn. Meteorol. Oceanogr. 67(1) 26031, https://doi.org/10.3402/tellusa.v67.26031.
Shukla B P, Kishtawal C M and Pal P K 2017 Satellite-based nowcasting of extreme rainfall events over Western Himalayan region; IEEE J. Sel. Top. Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens. 10(5) 1681–1686, https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2017.2655105.
Singh B and Thapliyal R 2022 Cloudburst events observed over Uttarakhand during monsoon season 2017 and their analysis; Mausam 73(1) 91–104.
Sravana Kumar M, Shekhar M S, Rama Krishna S S V S, Bhutiyani M R and Ganju A 2012 Numerical simulation of cloud burst event on August 05, 2010, over Leh using WRF mesoscale model; Nat. Hazards 62 1261–1271, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0145-1.
Thayyen R J, Dimri A P, Kumar P and Agnihotri G 2013 Study of cloudburst and flash floods around Leh, India, during August 4–6, 2010; Nat. Hazards 65 2175–2204, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0464-2.
Yadav B C, Thayyen R J and Jain K 2020 Topoclimatic zones and characteristics of the upper Ganga basin, Uttarakhand, India; Int. J. Climatol. 40(14) 6002–6019, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6562.
Acknowledgements
The authors are indebted to ISRO MOSDAC (Indian Space Research Organisation, Meteorological & Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre) for providing cloudburst alert generated through the NETRA algorithm, operational on the portal.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Bipasha Paul Shukla: Conceptualisation, writing – review and editing; Anupam Priamvada: Conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis and investigation, writing – draft preparation, review and editing, and resources; and Nita H Shah: Resources.
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by Manish Naja
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shah, N.H., Priamvada, A. & Shukla, B.P. Validation of satellite-based cloudburst alerts: An assessment of location precision over Uttarakhand, India. J Earth Syst Sci 132, 161 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02177-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02177-z