North India is grappling with an unprecedented climate emergency as extreme and intense rainfall events have caused widespread devastation across the region. According to Sunita Narain, director-general of the Centre for Science and Environment, the monsoon of 2025 has been anything but normal, with a “deluge of Biblical proportions” and an alarming disruption of fundamental weather systems.
Record-Breaking Deluge and Human Cost
The scale of the devastation has been immense, with vast areas flooded, infrastructure destroyed, and livelihoods wiped out. The extreme rainfall is the new abnormal.
• Punjab experienced heavy to extremely heavy rainfall on 24 out of 31 days in August.
• Himachal Pradesh saw heavy rain for more than 90% of the last three months, with rainfall exceeding 300% of its weekly average in early September.
• The region, including Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, has also seen at least 13 confirmed cloudburst events.
These events have caused mighty mountains to crumble into “rivers of mud,” underscoring the high human and economic cost.
A “Giant Mess in the Skies”: Why It’s Happening
While the intensity of the rain is a direct consequence of global warming which causes more rain to fall over fewer days the report points to a more complex disruption of global wind systems. The monsoon season has seen an extraordinary number of Western Disturbances winds from the Mediterranean with 19 confirmed until the first week of September. This is a dramatic increase from the typical one or two.
This is believed to be caused by a weakening of the Arctic’s jet stream due to climate change, which is causing a collision with the monsoon winds and leading to catastrophic rainfall. Additionally, unstable wind systems from the Arabian Sea are pushing against monsoon winds from the Bay of Bengal, creating what Narain describes as a “giant mess in the skies.”
The report warns that this instability is the “revenge of nature,” and it’s not going away. The frequency and intensity of these extreme weather events will only continue to increase, demanding a fundamental shift in how societies build and adapt to this new climate reality.