Nat Hazards (2015) 78:1463–1467

DOI 10.1007/s11069-015-1768-9

SHORT COMMUNICATION

A study on the occurrence of flood events over Jammu

and Kashmir during September 2014 using satellite
remote sensing

Anoop Kumar Mishra1

Received: 22 January 2015 / Accepted: 15 April 2015 / Published online: 30 April 2015
Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract During the first week of September 2014, the Jammu and Kashmir region
witnessed devastating floods across the majority of its districts, caused by multi-day heavy
rainfall events. According to data provided by the Home Ministry of India, several thou-
sand villages across the state were hit and 390 villages completely submerged. The pre-
liminary assessment of property damage was estimated between INR 50,000 million to
INR 60,000 million. Approximately 277 people died. In this study, an effort was made to
analyze the heavy rainfall events over Jammu and Kashmir using hourly data at the fine
spatial scale from satellite remote sensing. Data over Jammu and Kashmir reveal strong
diurnal variation in rainfall over the severely affected districts. Most of these districts
experienced continuous frequent heavy rainfall rates in the range of 15–22 mm/h during
the first week of September 2014. The results show that the cumulative rainfall during 2–6
September 2014 may have contributed to the flood events.

Keywords Remote sensing
Flood
Convection
Radar

1 Introduction

Flooding in Jammu and Kashmir is a very common phenomenon due to the complex
orography of this region. The low-level convergence of southeasterlies and northwesterlies
coupled with orographic uplift causes very heavy rainfall, making Jammu and Kashmir a
flood-prone region. This region has a long history of flood events. The first major flood to
hit the state was in July 1893, when 52 h of continuous rainfall resulted in great calamity
(Lawrence 1895). It caused 25,426 acres of crops to be submerged, and 2225 houses were

& Anoop Kumar Mishra

anoopmishra_1@yahoo.co.in; daksha112@gmail.com
1
Centre for Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics, Sathyabama University,
Chennai 600119, Tamilnadu, India

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wrecked. In July 1903, the valley recorded another major flood. More than 7000 houses
collapsed, which resulted in huge losses of life and property. In 1929, this region expe-
rienced one more flood, which severely affected Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. A few more
devastating floods occurred in Jammu and Kashmir in 1948, 1950, 1957, 1959, 1992 and
2010.
Jammu and Kashmir have a very poor rain gauge density. A list of the rain gauge
stations in the flood-affected districts in Jammu and Kashmir is given in Table 1. It is
noteworthy that the rain gauge distribution density over most of the flood-affected districts
is so poor that there are 0–2 rain gauges in a 200-km2 area. This poor density of rain gauge
stations along with the complex topography limits the applicability of rain gauges to
monitor rainfall during flood events in Jammu and Kashmir (Mishra 2013b). Moreover, a
few of these rain gauge stations stopped working during heavy rain events.
Space-based remote satellite sensing provides an opportunity to monitor rainfall during
these events. Heavy rainfall events during floods show large spatial and temporal variation.
Satellite data at very fine temporal and spatial scales (hourly, 4–8 km) are essential to
monitor rainfall during these catastrophic events (Mishra and Srinivasan 2013). Rainfall
monitoring from microwave observations from satellites suffers from poor temporal and
spatial sampling, while infrared observation results in large errors due to the indirect
relationship between cloud top heights and rainfall.
In this study, merged information from both microwave and near infrared measurements
is used to monitor rainfall during flood events over Jammu and Kashmir. For this purpose,
a rain index-based technique developed by Mishra (2013a) is used to monitor rainfall from
Meteosat/Kalpana IR and water vapor channels at 5/8-km resolution. Mishra (2013a, b)
developed a multispectral rainfall signature-based method to derive rain indices. Mishra
and Srinivasan (2013) used a rain index-based rainfall estimation technique (Mishra 2013a)
to study flood events in Kedarnath in June 2013.

2 Results and Discussion

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) attributed the formation of very dense
clouds over Jammu and Kashmir to the presence of a low pressure area over the Bay of
Bengal and its west-northwestward movement across the central parts of India along with
the formation of a low pressure area over Saurashtra and Kutch and the adjoining northeast
Arabian Sea. These dense clouds over Jammu and Kashmir are shown in Fig. 1. These
clouds cause heavy rainfall over various districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
Hourly rainfall was estimated from Meteosat for 2–8 September 2014 using the tech-
nique developed by Mishra (2013a, b, 2014) at 5-km resolution. Meteosat data were
unavailable during 1800–2100 UTC for these days. During this interval, Kalpana data were

Table 1 List of rain gauges over

Districts Number Districts Number
flood-affected districts of Jammu
of stations of stations
and Kashmir (2012 updated)
Budgam 4 Ganderbal 0
Rajouri 0 Kulgam 0
Poonch 4 Pulwama 3
Baramulla 10 Reasi 2
Anantnag 11 Srinagar 5

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Fig. 1 Composite Kalpana image showing clouds over Jammu and Kashmir (red circle) on 4 September
2014 (figure downloaded from MOSDAC)

used to monitor the hourly rainfall at 8-km spatial resolution. Rainfall was estimated for
ten severely affected districts in Jammu and Kashmir. An hourly time series of the rainfall
is shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 2 shows the diurnal variation of rainfall over ten districts in Jammu and Kashmir
during 2–8 September 2014. Strong diurnal rainfall variation can be observed over the
affected districts. It can also be observed that most of the rainfall activities occurred during
2–6 September over those regions. Anantnag and Kulgam experienced the highest hourly
rainfall rate of about 24 mm/h. These districts received frequent heavy rainfall rates in the
range 8–20 mm/h. Most of these districts received continuous rainfall from 2–6 September
2014. Figure 3 shows the accumulated rainfall over Jammu and Kashmir during 2–8
September 2014.
Figure 3 shows that the Anantnag, Pulwama and Reasi districts received the maximum
weekly accumulated rainfall in the range 400–500 mm. The maximum hourly rainfall
never exceeded 25 mm, ruling out the possibility of a cloud burst. It can be concluded that
the cumulative rainfall during the first week of September may have had a great impact on
the bursting of the lake/river upstream in different parts of Jammu and Kashmir. The lack
of vegetation and higher friction over terrain slopes may also have contributed to the
landslides and water flow into the rivers. The high accumulated rainfall observed in the
Anantnag district and nearby areas resulted in a high discharge rate (70,000 m3/s compared
to the normal discharge of 25,000 m3/s in the Sangam River). Heavy cumulative rainfall
over Srinagar also contributed to a high discharge rate in Jhelum River. Jhelum River in

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Fig. 2 Time series of the rain rate (mm/h) over flood-affected districts of Jammu and Kashmir during 2–8
September 2014

Fig. 3 Weekly rainfall (in mm) over Jammu and Kashmir during 2–8 September 2014

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Srinagar was reported to have flowed at 22.40 feet (6.83 m), which was 4.40 feet (1.34 m)
above the danger mark.
During last few decades, there have been increasing numbers of flood events in Jammu
and Kashmir. The socioeconomic impact of these flood events is very large over this part
of country. Given the inaction for the mitigation of these events, adaptation actions are
imperative.

Acknowledgments Meteosat data from EUMETSAT used in this study are thankfully acknowledged. I am
also thankful to the Vice Chancellor of Sathyabama University for encouragement.

References
Lawrence WR (1895) The valley of Kashmir. Asian Educational Services, New Delhi
Mishra A (2013a) A new technique to estimate precipitation at fine scale using multifrequency satellite
observations over Indian land and oceanic regions. IEEE Trans Geosci Remote Sens 51:4349–4358.
doi:10.1109/TGRS.2012.2226733
Mishra A (2013b) Effect of rain gauge density over the accuracy of rainfall: a case study over Bangalore,
India. SpringerPlus 2:311
Mishra A, Srinivasan J (2013) Did a cloud burst occur in Kedarnath during 16 and 17 June 2013? Curr Sci
105(10):1351–1352

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