Back to news
22 Jun 2023 | Cryosphere

Flood risk rising despite below-average monsoon

3 mins Read

70% Complete
Extremely dry(< -3), Very dry(-2 to -3), Dry(-1 to -2), Near normal (1 to -1), Wet(1 to 2), Very wet(2 to 3), Extremely wet(>3)
Key messages
Flood risk rising
Extremely dry(< -3), Very dry(-2 to -3), Dry(-1 to -2), Near normal (1 to -1), Wet(1 to 2), Very wet(2 to 3), Extremely wet(>3)

Figure 1: The four-month precipitation outlook from May to August 2023 indicates that near-normal conditions will persist in most of the basins except the Ganges basin where relatively some deficit is expected. A minor surplus is expected of the lower parts of the Indus basin. Source: https://lib.icimod.org/record/36290

 

June–September are crucial months for the HKH, with the monsoon rains accounting for 80% of the region’s annual precipitation. The increasing unpredictability of the season, however, is causing chains of disastrous events, leaving countries in the region struggling to adapt and respond. We have had several recent incidences where a single event has triggered disastrous impacts – the 2022 Pakistan floods, which led to 1730 deaths and economic losses tallying over USD 15 billion being the most recent.

 

The time to act is now.

For further information, please contact our inhouse experts:

Manish Shrestha: shrestha.manish@icimod.org

Pradeep Dangol: pradeep.dangol@icimod.org

 

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up
27 Jul 2018 DFAT Brahmaputra
Synthesizing Knowledge on the Vanishing Springs of the Himalaya

Springs are the main source of water for millions of people in the mid-hills of the HKH and provide multiple ...

4 May 2021 Cryosphere
Importance of glaciers for water availability in Pakistan

Snow and glacier meltwater from the Karakoram and western Himalaya provides water to 268 million people in the Indus basin ...

22 Mar 2017 Cryosphere
The cold does not bother her anyway

On her desk, Gunjan Silwal is engrossed in her computer, analyzing glacier mass balance data, working on figures and graphs ...

Third UIBN–AC Meeting discusses data gaps in Upper Indus basin research

The UIBN–AC Meeting was primarily held to recap previous meetings, discuss the progress made by the country chapter’s Technical Working ...

13 Dec 2018 KDKH
Koshi DRR knowledge hub to strengthen transboundary collaboration

http://naturekhabar.com/en/archives/12108

Capacity building activities till June 2022

One of our primary objectives is to improve the capacity of our partners to monitor cryosphere changes in the region. ...

31 Jan 2023 Cryosphere
Monitoring and understanding permafrost in Humla, Nepal

“Do you know that the ground can be frozen?”, asks Miriam Jackson, our Senior Cryosphere Expert, to a group of ...

13 Mar 2018 Gender in Koshi
Juggling ‘two fronts’ – the women of today

Women are increasingly getting an education in underdeveloped/developing countries, despite this by no means being the norm (for example, according ...