Thiruvananthapuram, March 25: The rains which lashed many parts of South India are not summer showers but another bleak symptom of climate change, according to a noted environmentalist.
Dr Achuthan, scientist and campaigner of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, told this correspondent that media had blundered by calling the rains summer showers. "Just because this rain came when we are moving into summer does not mean that it is summer rain," he said. "Summer rain is a localised phenomenon of a short duration. It is convectional rain caused by rising currents of warm air. But the current spell of rains was caused by a depression."
He pointed out that summer rain would never be widespread, fierce and lengthy as the recent bout of showers. "Moreover, technically speaking, summer rain occurs only in May and not in March," he added.
Dr Achuthan said, it was evident that the current rain was another vagary caused by climate change. "There has been unequal heating of the equatorial region in recent years and this is triggering severe storms and rain," he said. Storms had been common earlier too, but their frequency, intensity and ferocity had increased of late. "These are bad signs," he said.
The current spell of rains has caused severe damage to the agricultural sector in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and other states. In Kerala alone, crop worth Rs 100 crores has been destroyed.
Dr Achuthan said that there were also fears that the untimely rain may be a harbinger of drought. "We can not be sure of that, but there are such concerns," he said.
