Dominic Yazokie
DIPR News Feature | October 18
The ‘Global Climate Change’ due to global warming by the formation of green house gases in the atmosphere, is currently considered the most alarming development to scientists. The global warming effects will affect climate change globally according the resource persons from ‘National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), New Delhi’, at the recently held training in the month of August 2010, on Climate Change, organized by A.T.I., Kohima.
According to the observations made, over the Eastern Himalayas in 1996 by Scientists (Kripalani et al), there is an increase in rainfall during the monsoon season.
Nagaland, being in this part of the Himalayan Range, is also experiencing the increase in rainfall. The increase is not in the average total rainfall annually, but in the average intensity and quantum of discharge during the monsoon.
This year there was an increase in rainfall quantum, in the month of July by 8.45% above normal, as per the hydrological records of the Directorate of Soil & Water Conservation, Government of Nagaland.
Nagaland in located geographically at the catchment level of the Eastern Himalayas, where the clouds from the Bay of Bengal condense and discharge their rainloads. And as opined by the scientists from NIDM, ‘As a result of Global Warming, the clouds are heavier laden and resultantly contains heavier quantum of moisture to discharge’. Consequently, the heavier rains are apprehended to become a recurring phenomenon, on account of which, comprehensive salvage and preparedness strategies and policies, need be planned by the concerned authorities.
The impacts of this Global Warming and Climate Change, has had effects all over Nagaland, in the form of widespread landslides. The highest casualty of the heavy rainfall this year, is reportedly the roads.
The NH-39 is snapped by a deep and wide landslide at the KMC dumping area. The once sinking zone has now become a valley, stretching from above the road to the river below in a stretch of about a kilometer. The NH-39, afflicted with numerous other landslides, is only a sample. There are reports that almost all the roads connecting the different areas of Nagaland are under peril.
Most roads in Nagaland are cut across the mountain ranges, without culverts and proper drainages (nullah), making the roads carry the entire water flow from above, to accumulate or flow to a concentrated outlet stream, causing flush floods.
Apart from flush floods, the scientists have made prediction on change in crop production patterns, as a fallout to climate change, even in Nagaland, in the years to come.
