A new approach to avalanche prediction over Indian Western Himalaya

Avalanche prediction is mainly done by conventional and statistical techniques and over Indian Himalayas it is predicted in terms of none, low, medium and high avalanche danger as well as occurrence or non-occurrence of avalanche. In the present study, a quantitative range is calculated for each of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current science (Bangalore) 2010-01, Vol.98 (1), p.69-72
Main Authors: Joshi, J. C., Ganju, A., Sharma, Vikas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambient temperature
Analytical forecasting
Avalanche danger
Avalanches
Climate models
Climatic zones
Meteorology
Modeling
RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS
Snow
Warnings
Weather forecasting
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Avalanche prediction is mainly done by conventional and statistical techniques and over Indian Himalayas it is predicted in terms of none, low, medium and high avalanche danger as well as occurrence or non-occurrence of avalanche. In the present study, a quantitative range is calculated for each of the danger levels. Initially, normalized snow and meteorological parameters have been divided into 10 equal ranges (between 0 and 1) and an index of avalanche (IA) has been calculated for each range of every parameter. The model output has been compared with avalanches occurring over the concerned regions for the winter of 2004–05. The avalanche prediction accuracy for different regions in Lower Himalayan zone varies from 80% to 88% except at Dhundee where it is 64%. In Middle Himalayan zone, prediction accuracy on Drass is 88% and that on Patseo is 66%. It has also been concluded that the contribution of individual forecasting variables towards avalanches in different regions vary.
ISSN:0011-3891