An extraordinary meteorological event may have occurred as winds from the Southwest Monsoon (SWM) season have possibly crossed the western Himalayan mountain range and reached Tibet. This would be a highly unusual occurrence, as the Himalayas traditionally act as a crucial barrier, keeping the moisture-laden monsoon winds within India and leaving the Tibetan plateau arid.
Satellite Imagery Provides First Clues
The initial observation was made by Manish Mehta, a glaciologist with the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), who noticed a satellite map from the first week of September showing moisture moving from above Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Ladakh towards Tibet. This moisture transport, if confirmed, would challenge a fundamental climatic process that has defined the region for millennia.
Experts Point to Rare Atmospheric Interactions
In response to the finding, climate scientists offered potential explanations for the phenomenon. Raghu Murtugudde from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the University of Maryland cautioned that while it’s difficult to infer moisture transport from images alone, strong advection—or the horizontal transport of an atmospheric property—into the Himalayan foothills could push air and moisture northward through gaps in the mountains.
Roxy Mathew Koll from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, suggested that Western Disturbances—extratropical weather systems—could be interacting with the monsoon’s moisture, carrying it beyond the subcontinent. The increased frequency of these disturbances during the SWM season this year is itself a rare event and an active area of research.
A Potential Sign of a Warming Planet
If the monsoon’s crossing of the Himalayas is verified, it would serve as significant evidence that global warming is fundamentally altering the Earth’s climatic processes. This kind of change could have widespread and unpredictable impacts on precipitation patterns and ecosystems across the entire region, highlighting the cascading effects of climate change.