Present projections of the Brahmaputra flooding are based mostly on observations of rainfall patterns.
Yearly, the Brahmaputra floods huge areas in India’s Northeast, notably Assam, and continues its path of destruction in Bangladesh, from the place it lastly flows into the Bay of Bengal. For years, scientists have been trying with concern on the river’s potential for catastrophic flooding sooner or later, particularly because the local weather warms. It seems that this potential has been underestimated to this point — even with out accounting for a warming local weather. That is the conclusion of a brand new research revealed within the journal Nature Communications.
What’s completely different
Present projections of the Brahmaputra flooding are based mostly on observations of rainfall patterns. Discharge information of the river, nonetheless, date again solely to the Nineteen Fifties in Bangladesh, which the brand new research analysed.
The research is predicated on an examinations of tree rings, which confirmed rainfall patterns going again seven centuries — lengthy earlier than discharge information have been compiled.
The rings confirmed that the post-Nineteen Fifties interval was truly one of many driest for the reason that 1300s. There have been a lot wetter intervals up to now. Projecting from all these intervals, the researchers concluded that damaging floods in all probability will come extra regularly than thought.
If one tasks from fashionable discharge information, the researchers mentioned, one can be underestimating the hazard by 24% to 38%. “If the devices say we should always anticipate flooding towards the tip of the century to come back about each four-and-a-half years, we’re saying we should always actually anticipate flooding to come back about each three years,” lead writer Mukund Palat Rao mentioned in a press release issued by Columbia College, from the place he not too long ago earned his PhD.
What tree rings present
Tree rings develop wider in years when soil moisture is excessive. Not directly, wider rings mirror extra rainfall and better river runoff.
The research checked out rings of historical bushes sampled at 28 websites in Tibet, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, at websites shut sufficient to be affected by the identical climate programs because the Brahmaputra watershed. Analysing the rings, the scientists constructed a 696-year chronology (1309 to 2004).
They then in contrast the rings with historic information going again to the 1780s, it turned out that the widest rings lined up neatly with recognized main flood years. Thus, they extrapolated the yearly river discharge within the centuries previous fashionable information.
📣 Categorical Defined is now on Telegram. Click on here to join our channel (@ieexplained) and keep up to date with the most recent
The findings
From a river-flow gauge in northern Bangladesh, information confirmed a median discharge some 41,000 cubic metres per second from 1956 to 1986, and 43,000 cu m from 1987 to 2004.
The tree rings, in distinction, confirmed that 1956-1986 was in solely the thirteenth percentile for river discharge, and 1987-2004 was within the twenty second. The rings did present another comparatively dry instances, within the 1400s, 1600s and 1800s. However additionally they present very moist intervals of utmost flooding for which there was no comparable interval throughout 1956-2004. The worst spell lasted from about 1560-1600, 1750-1800, and 1830-1860.
The takeaways
The researchers mentioned their findings imply that utilizing the discharge file would underestimate future flood hazard by 24-38%, with out factoring in local weather warming — which might solely improve the frequency of future flooding.
Increased temperatures drive extra evaporation of ocean waters, and on this area that water finally ends up as monsoon rainfall. That’s the reason scientists imagine that warming local weather will intensify the monsoon rains in coming a long time, and in flip improve seasonal flooding.
“Excessive discharges will proceed to be related to an elevated chance of flood hazard sooner or later,” the research authors wrote. They advised that this could possibly be counteracted to some extent by “potential adjustments in coverage, land use, or infrastructure which will ameliorate flood threat”.
As it’s, the river, which originates within the Tibetan Himalayas, already floods areas alongside its course. Whereas flooding in Assam is broadly reported yearly — no everlasting answer has been discovered but — low-lying areas of Bangladesh too are hit very onerous. In 1998, 70% of Bangladesh went underwater, whereas critical floods additionally got here in 2007 and 2010, the researchers famous.
