Heavy rains are lashing Hyderabad and it completely drowned the capital city of Telangana. Rains drowned the myth of Hyderabad being a global city by brining the life to a standstill. Helpless TRS government headed by CM KCR decided to throw in the towel and call in the help of the Army in restoring normalcy.
Rains damaged roads so much so now they started caving in scaring commuters. Apart from it pot holes popped out at alarming frequency and with rain water covering the potholes, commuters had difficult time in finding them and avert accidents.
In the midst of all this The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Sup ply and Sewerage Board started indulging in blame game. While sink hole appeared at NTR marg near secretariat couple of days back, yesterday it appeared in King Koti. This is not a new phenomenon as four years back huge crater was found at Model House in Panjagutta and later portions of roads sank at Fever hospital, Model House, Jalagam Vengal Rao Park and near Taj Banjara Hotel.
Now many climate change experts say heavy rains in Hyderabad is due to climate change. YK Reddy , IMD in-charge for Telangana and AP said “For the next three days, we foresee very heavy rainfall in Hyderabad and the rest of the state. But, the worry is that towards the end of the month there could be another depression bringing more rain to the city ,"
G Bala, a climate change expert at Indian Institute of Science's Divecha Centre for Climate Change based in Bangalore says “It's very strange that several depressions are forming near Odisha and Andhra Pradesh pa coast. They normally i travel northwestwardly and end up in Gujarat r and Rajasthan, but that seems to be not happening this year. This is a strange pattern as there are no rains on the coast of Kerala and Karnataka,“
Sanjay Vashist, a top expert at Climate Action Network reveals “Our lives evolve around seasons, but now due to high concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, the rain and wind patterns are going haywire. This is triggering more depressions and more rain off the AP coast,“ and adds “Without any short-term or long-term policy , you will see more of these weather patterns,“
RV.Subba Rao, retired senior meteorologist says “The conditions are favourable to form a depression in the Bay of Bengal compared to the Arabian S e a due to war mer sea condi tions. There is no doubt that we are witnessing something unique and it's the result of climate change,“ He adds .“Rainfall variations are a key component of climate change and there needs to be immediate localised studies to find out why this is happening so frequently ,“
Siddharth Pathak, head of Political Advocacy , Climate Action Network Inter national from New York says “Climate change and increasing global temperatures are resulting in greater variation in monsoon patterns and this is only going to increase if global temperature rises and carbon emissions are not controlled immediately . The intensity and distribution of monsoon is going to be impacted and we have been seeing increasing trends towards that. Not only would it impact agriculture, but the city infrastructure is also under greater risk,“
G.Bala adds “I am concerned about huge spacial difference of rainfall be tween regions. That's a major concern,“ What surprised many is while Kerala has reported a 30 per cent deficit rainfall this season, eastern Rajasthan to (Jaipur, Pushkar and Ajmer), strangely re ceived 30 per cent excess rain, and northeast has had a 15 per cent deficit rainfall, with barely days to go before the Southwest monsoon withdraws.
S.Jeevan Reddy says "Not just rains, we may witness severe drought in the years to come and there will be floods with huge destruction of AP coast line,“
