The Hindu Business Line : High tide, swell waves cause panic in coastal Kerala

COASTAL RAMPAGE: Huge, frothing waves continued to batter the coastline from Thiruvananthapuram to Thrissur on Friday. Pozhiyoor, a coastal hamlet outside Thiruvananthapuram, saw raging waves pound structures on the shore and flood fishing villages. Weathermen say these are monsoon waves normally associated with the onset of the monsoon but getting prematurely activated this time round. - C. Ratheesh Kumar

Thiruvananthapuram , May 20

UNUSUALLY strong tide and surging waves created panic in the coastal areas of a number of districts from Thiruvananthapuram in the south to Thrissur in the north for the second consecutive day on Friday.

Gushing seawaters from the `swell' waves, typically associated with the monsoon, caused extensive flooding of coastal villages. A number of fishing boats, apart from other fishing equipment, suffered damage.

No casualties or major destruction of property were reported, but Revenue Department officials estimated that at least 500 families were affected by the flooding.

In Thiruvananthapuram district, the coastal belt from Adimalathurai to Pozhiyoor was the worst affected with seawater breaching the shoreline and gushing inland to a distance of up to 150 metres.

Several houses were waterlogged and at least 100 families had to be shifted to relief camps put up at nearby schools.

Revenue officials have set up temporary outposts at the worst-affected areas to allay fears of people recovering slowly from the impact of the devastating tsunami of December last year.

When contacted, Dr C.K. Rajan, Professor and Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), said that enhanced wave action and other sea phenomena were the latest indication on how local weather was going to be impacted by larger planetary events such as global warming.

He added that there was an increasing need to make people aware of these changes, as they are bound to happen with increasing frequency henceforth, and fine-tune their response to each.

"What is needed most is seamless flow of information on the nature of weather change from those who possess it to those who need it badly. There was no institutional mechanism for this to take place yet."

He said that people must be sufficiently warned about the increasing tendency for regular lunar cycle of tides to ride ever higher over the mean sea level, bringing seawaters sloshing over onto roads and into neighbourhoods.

For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific evaluation organisation of the UN, has said that global warming would lead to an increase in the seawater temperature, rise in sea level and change in seawater salinity, sea wave phenomena, and ocean circulation.

The rise in the sea level and the climate change make the coastal area more vulnerable to inundation, coastal erosion and intrusion of saltwater.

Scientists expect that global warming would result in melting of glaciers and ice sheets even as the surface temperature of the upper ocean rises, causing it to expand.

This sea-level rise will accelerate erosion, inundation, and the loss of beaches and wetlands.

It will lead to higher storm surges, increasing the area subject to flooding from coastal storms and placing more land in the path of wave-driven erosion.

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