Published on 05 Mar 2025
• Rivers in the sky or atmospheric rivers are becoming more intense and can be linked with devastating floods, heat stress and are also a cause for the recent Wayanad event.
• AR triggers when the water vapour forms a band or a column in the lower part of the atmosphere which moves from the tropics to the cooler latitudes.
• It comes down as rain or snow, devastating enough to cause floods or deadly avalanches.
• These invisible “rivers in the sky” carry some 90% of the total water vapour that moves across the Earth’s mid-latitudes.
• They can also be responsible for the increasing humid heat during the summer months.
• A 2023 study showed that 70% of all major floods in India in the last 35 years were associated with ARs.
• ARs are identified and measured using a metric called Vertically integrated water vapour transport (IVT).
Atmospheric Rivers
flood
heat stress
avalanche
Vertically integrated water vapour transport
climate change
climate