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India faces alarming climate shifts: Unseasonal snowfall, early heatwaves and deadly avalanches signal crisis
Summary
With avalanches burying workers in February, heatwaves scorching cities in March, and cyclones defying seasonal norms, India stands at the frontline of a fast-unraveling climate crisis
After all the facts have been laid on the table, and all the arguments have been made; when the best intentions to save the planet from a fiery future crash against a resolute wall of government apathy and corporate greed, sometimes all that’s left to do is to take a resigned look at the omens of impending disaster. Sniff the air, as our hunter gatherer ancestors used to do, and try to prepare the best you can for the dark times that are coming.
Because if you were to gather all the different climate signals coming through in the form of seemingly disconnected news stories, then the inescapable picture that emerges is that we are living in a different version of Planet Earth. An Earth that bears very little resemblance to the planet in which human beings have lived, thrived and multiplied in over the past 10,000 years. A planet that is very different from the one of just a decade ago.
Here are some omens.
It is now late March, and for most people across India, it will seem like a trick of the mind to imagine that in the Himalayan regions, it is still technically winter. And while the country as a whole has suffered from unnaturally hot winter and spring months (both January and February were the hottest ever on record), there has been a decent amount of winter snowfall in the Himalaya.
Just not in the months that you’d expect.
Snowfall season in the Himalaya has shifted from December-January to February-March. While this shift has been ongoing for the better part of a decade now, it is now the norm. Speak to any mountain community, and they will tell you that in the higher Himalayan valleys, there is less snow, and more rain. When it does snow, it occurs at the wrong time. And this shift is turning deadly.
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Those of us who have been to Badrinath in Uttarakhand, whether as a pilgrim or for a mountain hike in the Alaknanda Valley, would know Mana, the “last village in India". There are many such villages along India’s Himalayan borders, but Mana is arguably the most visited and therefore the most famous. On 28 February, Mana was in the news for a different reason. A group of Border Roads Organization workers were suddenly buried when a massive avalanche hit their camp at 5am on a stretch between Badrinath and Mana. They were in their tents, sleeping.
Of the 54 workers buried alive, 50 were rescued by 1 March, but four of them died. By the next day, the missing workers were also found, all dead. In all, 8 workers died during the disaster.
When I read about the it in the news, I was reminded of a similar disaster—the notorious avalanche of February 2021 that caused a deadly flash flood in the Rishi and Dhauli Ganga rivers (tributaries of the Alaknanda). That had been an omen: unseasonal winter heat in the high Himalaya causing ice to melt and cause a flash flood.
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In Mana, the omen was unseasonal snow. In a report in the environment magazine Down To Earth, a Garhwali environmental scientist pointed out that before the climate system was broken, December and January snowfall would accumulate on the cold soil of mountain slopes. But with since snowfall season has shifted, the ground is no longer cold enough to hold the weight of fresh snow, and with additional snowfall, avalanches would be more common. Ironically, the BRO workers had been working near Mana to clear the road of snow.
These are the seemingly small seasonal shifts brought about by climate change that ultimately capsize planetary systems.
An avalanche warning system is now in place in Uttarakhand. Whether it works or not, it has come too late for those 8 BRO workers.
Another omen.
February 2025 was India’s hottest February since records began in 1901, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). No wonder then that severe heatwaves have begun unseasonably early in many parts of the country. Towards end February, there were humid heatwaves all along the Konkan coast, from Maharashtra to Karnataka to Kerala. Kannur recorded a daytime high of 40 degrees Celsius, Mumbai hit 38 degrees.
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According to IMD data, between end-February and end-March, 9 states suffered from heatwaves, with Gujarat and Odisha experiencing the most severe heatwave days. Not surprisingly, the IMD has predicted a scorching summer for 2025.
Where there are dark omens, gallows humour can’t be far behind. The source of the latter has been the stock market. Reeling from a pronounced correction since October last year, earlier this month market experts enthusiastically predicted an uptick in domestic spending in consumer goods, led by the sale of big ticket white goods such as air conditioners and refrigerators due to an early and prolonged summer. Watch your FMCG stocks deliver handsome returns while the world burns.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently published its annual State Of The Climate report for 2024, currently the hottest year on record. Among its litany of woes, one piece of information stood out. As the Indian Ocean warms faster than other global ocean systems, cyclones are becoming more intense. However, even their timing has shifted. Cyclone Remal which hit West Bengal and Bangladesh on 26 May, was one of the most late pre-monsoon cyclones ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal. Similarly, Cyclone Asna in the Arabian Sea became the first cyclone in 40 years to develop in the middle of the monsoon, in August.
More omens.
