On January 18, Kalinchowk — located at an altitude of 3,800 metres above sea level— finally got its first snow of this winter. It’s been a very dry winter in vast swathes across Nepal, much like in Himachal, Kashmir and Uttarakhand in India.
A day’s drive from Kathmandu, Kalinchowk has blossomed as a happy snowland for both Nepali and foreign tourists in recent years. The mountain settlement gets snow from late November through February. To many Nepalis, the sight of puffy white snow sitting over sloping red and blue roofs on the multi-coloured modern structures offers the experience of an idyllic Himalayan resort. To the more adventurous ones, it also offers opportunities for snowboarding and skiing.
While the hardy trekkers have taken to Nepal’s numerous mountain trails regardless, it’s been a disappointing winter for those who head out to places like Kalinchowk. Nepal is experiencing the driest winter in recent years. The country receives an average of 60mm of rain in three ‘winter months’ — December, January and February; it had only received 1.9mm by last week. By all indications, Nepal is headed for yet another winter drought.
In Nepal, last winter was also dry with just 12.9mm of rain, the lowest precipitation recorded in the last 15 years, according to news reports. Data shows that 12 out of the last 18 winters had less than average rainfall, and eight out of those 12 winters experienced droughts.
That is alarming. The wintertime precipitation provides critical mass input to existing glaciers and modulates the reflective power of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau, which in turn impacts the monsoon that follows. The Himalayas, due to their unique geographical position, provides a physical barrier that plays an important role in global weather patterns by acting as a heat source during the summer and a heat sink during the winter, observes an article Western Disturbances: A Review published by the American Geophysical Union, AGU, in 2015. Regional spring snowmelt runoff contributes 15–44 percent of the discharge to the tributaries of the Indus and 6–20 percent of the Ganga. Spring runoff becomes especially important in the case of delayed monsoon onset. Western Disturbances (WDs) are important weather systems that are responsible for almost one-third of the annual precipitation over the northern Indian region and most of the cold season precipitation, according to the article.
Nepal and northern India both rely on WDs for winter rain and snow. WDs start from the Mediterranean, and move eastward through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan before arriving in western India and Nepal. In recent years, the moisture carried by WDs is mostly spent by the time it arrives in the Nepal region.
The Himalaya, also called The Third Pole, is the largest source of stored water after the polar regions. The glaciers in Nepal have melted 65% faster in the last decade than in the previous one and the country has lost almost a third of its ice volume in 30 years. Glaciers high in the Himalayas feed large river systems all over South Asia, home to over 1.8 billion people. Reduced water flows in the Indus, the Ganga and Brahmaputra threaten crops, livestock and local economies of communities across the region.
Another scientific study points to a correlation between reduced pre-monsoon rainfall, on the one hand, and forest fires and air pollution on the other. In 2020–2021, Nepal’s ‘fire season’ commenced four months earlier than normal, resulting in a fire detection rate 10 times greater than the long-term average, and elevated air pollution to hazardous levels.
The study, titled ‘Amplified drought trends in Nepal increase the potential for Himalayan wildfires’ published in February 2023 by Springer Nature investigated the connections between Nepal’s climate and wildfires and found a strong drought-fire association in observational data that is also projected by future climate simulations.’ “There is a larger trend in the current spell of a very dry winter in Nepal and north India,” said Binod Pokharel, one of the 14 authors of the article and professor at Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. “The trend is worrying. It needs to be studied closely.”
On the Indian sub-continent temperatures are predicted to rise above an average between 3.5° C and 5.5° C by 2100, according to a study by Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which works on the Hindu Kush Himalayan region — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and India.
Akhilesh Upadhyay, former Editor-in-Chief of The Kathmandu Post, is Senior Research Fellow at IIDS, a Kathmandu-based think tank. The views expressed are personal.
In Nepal, a worrisome decline in snow and rainfall this winter
6
23
22.01.2024
On January 18, Kalinchowk — located at an altitude of 3,800 metres above sea level— finally got its first snow of this winter. It’s been a very dry winter in vast swathes across Nepal, much like in Himachal, Kashmir and Uttarakhand in India.
A day’s drive from Kathmandu, Kalinchowk has blossomed as a happy snowland for both Nepali and foreign tourists in recent years. The mountain settlement gets snow from late November through February. To many Nepalis, the sight of puffy white snow sitting over sloping red and blue roofs on the multi-coloured modern structures offers the experience of an idyllic Himalayan resort. To the more adventurous ones, it also offers opportunities for snowboarding and skiing.
While the hardy trekkers have taken to Nepal’s numerous mountain trails regardless, it’s been a disappointing winter for those who head out to places like Kalinchowk. Nepal is experiencing the driest winter in recent years. The country receives an average of 60mm of rain in three ‘winter months’ — December, January and February; it had only received 1.9mm by last week. By all indications, Nepal is headed for yet another winter drought.
In Nepal, last winter was also dry........
© hindustantimes
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
