In the path of more storms
Cyclone Ockhi hit Kochi, with devastating effect, in 2017. In 2021, Cyclone Tauktae travelled parallel to the western coast, before making landfall in Gujarat. That same year, Cyclone Yaas, which originated in the Bay of Bengal, added to the havoc in Kochi.
Cyclones used to be an unusual phenomenon on the western coast, because of the historically cool waters of the Arabian Sea. In recent decades, that’s changed.
“Temperatures in the Arabian Sea have been rising gradually since the early 1900s, with an accelerated increase since the 1980s,” says Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Centre for Climate Change Research at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.
Researchers at IITM have observed a 52% increase in the number of cyclones in the Arabian Sea over the past four decades, along with an increase in intensity and duration. “As we saw with Tauktae, cyclones now spend a long time in the sea, building up a lot of moisture, increasing the chances of destruction along the coast,” Koll says.
Kochi’s position in the tapering southern end of India, makes it susceptible to cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal too.
Its vulnerabilities are compounded by its location between a sea whose levels are rising and the ravaged hills of the Western Ghats, which send monsoon runoff rushing into the city.
“We are seeing that total rainfall during the monsoon period is actually decreasing,” says Koll, who contributed to the recent IPCC report. “We’re having long dry periods, with intermittent heavy-rain events. When the rain does come, it can bring a month’s worth of rainfall in a few days.”
What is the mitigation plan? The short answer is that there isn’t one. At a virtual conference organised last year by the World Resources Institute — the non-profit global research institute that also helped formulate the Mumbai Climate Action Plan — experts and stakeholders from the state discussed the need for a robust action plan.
The most noteworthy project currently on the table is one that seeks to upgrade some of the city’s canals, to prevent flooding and promote water transportation.
“Restoring these is also an important step, as the drainage system is not capable of accommodating such huge quantities of precipitation appearing these days,” says Sunny George, director of the SCMS Water Institute, an educational institute that has provided technical support to the Kochi Municipal Corporation.