Abstract
Kashmir Valley has been witnessing erratic snowfall events in recent autumns which severely impacted apple orchards and harvests. Here, we combine remotely sensed data and field observations to map snowfall distribution and snow depths during the recent snowfall events in November 2018 and November 2019. Besides, we used ERA-5 reanalysis climate datasets to investigate the causes of these erratic snowfall events, pointing to an early arrival of Western Disturbances (WD) to the area. Analysis of these untimely snowfall episodes indicates that snow depths varied from 5–122 cm and 31–152 cm during the 2018 and 2019 snowfall events, respectively. In turn, satellite data analysis reveals that the apple orchards cover roughly 9.8% (1329 km2) of the entire surface of Kashmir Valley, out of which 32.6% were mildly to severely damaged by snow. The areas in South Kashmir suffered the most from the untimely snowfall with an area affected estimated to ~264 km2, followed by North Kashmir (~151 km2) and Central Kashmir (18 km2). The snowfall caused substantial harvest losses in orchards ranging from 4–50% with an average of ~35%. The geopotential analysis from the ERA-5 dataset provides insights into the synoptic weather patterns leading to the snowfall events and point to a trough in the high-troposphere (200 mb), along with a col at lower levels (850 mb) over the Kashmir Valley from November 2–5, 2018. The lower levels (850 mb) experienced intense cyclonic circulation which favored advection of moisture from the Arabian Sea during the November 6–7, 2019, snowfall event. The large economic losses related to early arrival of WD led to a virtual grounding of the horticultural sector in 2018 and 2019. Therefore, more baseline research is critically needed along with a comprehensive evaluation of the suitability of horticulture as an economically viable sector that is being promoted over the Kashmir region, also under climate change.
Highlights
The Himalayan region constitutes one of the most vulnerable areas as it suffers from extreme weather events under present climate conditions and in light of climate projections [1]
Since the apple trees are planted in rows and columns, we identified apple orchards based on the pattern using high-resolution
Other studies have found a decreasing or unchanged trend of Western Disturbances (WD) over the last decades [63,64]. While it was not the goal of this study to identify changes in the occurrence of WD situations, we find that the earlier arrival of WD in early winter—along with cold temperatures arriving from northern latitudes and the advection of moisture from the still-warm Arabian Sea— pose a serious threat to the agriculture and horticulture sectors in the region, even more so should the incidence of such early-season events become more frequent
Summary
The Himalayan region constitutes one of the most vulnerable areas as it suffers from extreme weather events under present climate conditions and in light of climate projections [1]. 2020, 12, 9206 region constitutes one of the most vulnerable areas as it suffers from extreme weather events under present climate conditions and in light of climate projections [1]. According to the observational records and, and on local livelihoods [15,16,17]. According the observational records projections, climate projections, the ongoing climatic changetoover the Himalayas has and not climate only impacted the the ongoing climaticand change the Himalayas hasalso notaltered only impacted pristinepatterns ecosystems pristine ecosystems earthover surface processes but weather the circulation overand the earth surface processes and altered weather circulation patterns over the region [18,19].
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