Studying the evolution of Uttarkashi cloudburst event from reanalysis datasets–A case study

Abstract

In recent years, the frequency and severity of cloudburst considerably increased over southern rim of Himalayas due to hot climate that leads to loss of human lives and damage properties. The observed rainfall data shows that cloudburst events with heavy rainfall ∼ 100–200 mm/day are common over the Himalayan region during the summer monsoon period. It is very necessary to understand the mechanisms associated with such type of short span of high impact localised weather events over the regions where observations are limited. Therefore, one of best way to study the mechanism associated with the formation and development of cloudburst is using the available high resolution reanalysis datasets. An effort is made to understand the role of atmospheric conditions that control the evolution of cloudburst event by considering two reanalyses datasets such as high resolution IMDAA and ERA5 reanalyses. The present study analysed a cloudburst case that occurred on 3rd August 2012 at 10 pm with heavy rainfall of ∼ 100 mm in a very short span of time over the Uttarkashi district. Various dynamic and thermodynamic parameters are calculated from the two datasets with an aim of determining the best representation of severity of the cloudburst event. It is noticed that the evolution of dynamic and thermodynamic variables is well represented in the high resolution IMDAA dataset as compared to the ERA5 dataset. The amount and spatial distribution of rainfall from IMDAA reanalyses are well comparable with satellite estimated rainfall (GPM), having better correlation (0.60) with the observed rainfall as compared to the ERA5 (0.28). The rainfall time bias over the Uttarkashi district is larger in ERA5 reanalyses (∼ 5 h) than in the IMDAA (∼ 3 h). The ERA5 is not able to capture such type of localise high rainfall event due to its low resolution, compared to high resolution reanalyses (12 km) of IMDAA. The observations also indicate that the moisture flux from the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and Arabian Sea interacted with northwesterly dry air over Uttarkashi and the orographic uplifting resulted the cloudburst. Overall, results show that the eveolution and mechanism associated with the cloudburst is better represented in IMDAA than the ERA5. More cases are required to be studied to further support the findings of this study.