Last Updated on October 30, 2026 1:26 am by INDIAN AWAAZ
Manan Kumar
Delhiites were surprised by the sudden showers on Thursday October 29. Many were pleased to see the pollution levels plummet but protestors aren’t happy as the rains could continue until November 1.
Regardless of public sentiment, thanks to weather experts in the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), we know that the sudden showers are connected to Cyclone Arnab which made landfall more than 1500 kilometers away near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the wee hours of October 28.
Immediate Cause
Delhi’s rains were a direct result of a rare “binary interaction” between two distinct weather systems: the residual moisture from Cyclone Arnab and an advancing Western Disturbance. Interestingly, Cyclone Arnab formed in the east, in the Bay of Bengal while the Western Disturbance owes its origin in the west, in the Mediterranean.
As Arnab dissolved into a deep depression, its massive cloud cover and peripheral atmospheric circulation acted like a giant pump, pushing massive volumes of warm, tropical moisture from the Bay of Bengal deep into Central and Northern India. At the same time, the Western Disturbance—a low-pressure weather system —arrived over northwest Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining Delhi-NCR skies resulting in sudden rains.
No harm was done in Delhi NCR but the initial findings of wreckage brought by Arnab’s 135 kilometre per hour wind velocity in the coastal areas of Andhra elsewhere despite prior warning are scary.
The IMD was surprised by how quickly the cyclone accelerated right after consolidating into a clear low-pressure system southwest of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on October 23. It rapidly organised into a depression and then a deep depression while moving northwestwards on October 25 and 25. The next day it crossed the threshold and was designated as a cyclone.
On October 27–28 it exploded into a severe and subsequently very severe Cyclonic storm before tearing into the Andhra Pradesh coastline. The IMD had to hurriedly scrabble and prepone its landfall by several hours.
Besides leaving eight people dead, Arnab led a trail of destruction on its path inundating over 80,000 hectares of cropland. This includes specific damage to approximately 70,900 hectares of paddy fields and 10,450 hectares of horticulture crops. Initial assessments indicate between 31 and 180 houses have been structurally damaged or collapsed and more than 1,000 trees were uprooted. The impact on recent big ticket investments on data centres is yet to be known.
The Underlying Cause and the Danger
The bad news is that Arnab kind of cyclones can become more frequent in the coming future because of rapid increase in global temperatures on land and in the oceans due to Climate Change.
One of the main causes that helped develop Arnab kind tropical Cyclones frequently is increase in ocean temperatures to at least 26.5°C (taken at 50 metre depth). The waters of the eastern Bay of Bengal exceeded 27°C to 28°C. This increase acted as the “thermal engine” for the storm, evaporating massive amounts of ocean water and injecting warm, moist air into the atmosphere.
The other big cause for Arnab was severely boosted by the active global El Niño climate pattern. During El Niño years, abnormal warming across equatorial oceans alters global atmospheric circulation. In the North Indian Ocean basin, this translated to a late-starting but high-energy storm cycle, setting up environmental conditions that favored rapid intensification—enabling Arnab to ramp up its peak wind speeds by 74 km/h in just 24 hours.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that global warming is “supercharging” the oceans, driving a distinct shift toward more intense and destructive tropical cyclones.
While climate scientists are of the opinion that global warming may not necessarily increase the total annual number of cyclones worldwide, it significantly alters their behavior, structure, and destructive potential. According to synthesis reports and updates from the WMO Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts on Tropical Cyclones, the core warnings regarding super severe storms include:
The global oceans are absorbing over 90% of the greenhouse gas concentrations that are hitting record highs. This thermal energy serves as high-octane fuel for storms. The WMO claims that with a 2°C global temperature increase, the global proportion of tropical cyclones that reach highly destructive Category 4 and 5 levels will likely increase. Models indicate that the probability of a storm exceeding Category 5 intensity could more than double.
One of the most dangerous trends highlighted by the WMO is the rate at which weak storms can explode into supercyclones. Because of abnormally warm sea surface temperatures and increased latent heat, storms are undergoing rapid intensification—jumping multiple categories in under 24 hours thereby drastically shrinking the window of preparedness for disaster management teams.
Moreover, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture (approximately 7% more water vapor per 1°C of warming). Consequently, the WMO projects an increase of 10% to 20% in tropical cyclone rainfall rates within 100 km of a storm’s center causing massive inland deluge, flash flooding, and waterlogging, even in regions far from the coast.
Even if wind speeds remained identical, the WMO warns that supercyclones are becoming fundamentally more dangerous due to sea-level rise. Driven by melting glaciers and thermal expansion, storms now ride on a higher baseline sea level. This allows deadly storm surges to travel much further inland, threatening low-lying coastal populations with catastrophic flooding.
Mitigation
Since cyclones are driven entirely by high ocean temperatures, the single most effective way to limit their occurrences and rapid intensification is to curb human-caused global warming.
This includes slashing Greenhouse Gas emissions by transitioning rapidly away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, thereby, reducing the trapped atmospheric heat that is currently bleeding into our oceans.
Climate models from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) show that rapidly curbing global warming to a 2°C threshold by the end of the century—rather than hitting it early—reduces the population exposed to severe tropical cyclones by a staggering 20% to 40%
Finally, there are no short and easy answers but one hard decision, that is, to curb our greed and build a better economic model. There is no safety unless we, the humans, do it. The time is now.