IIT Madras Study: Air Pollution Data Could Improve Urban Flood Forecasting by 51%

An international research team led by IIT Madras has found that accounting for atmospheric aerosols, tiny particles suspended in the air, can improve the simulation of extreme rainfall and urban flooding. The findings are based on a detailed analysis of the December 2015 Chennai flood, which was classified as a 1-in-100-year extreme event.

The study, published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, examined how aerosols affect cloud formation, rainfall patterns and subsequent flooding. Researchers said that these interactions are often left out of operational weather models because incorporating them requires significant computing resources.

How Air Pollution Affects Rainfall Prediction

Aerosols can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), which are tiny particles around which water droplets form. Their concentration can influence cloud microphysics, rainfall formation and the timing and location of precipitation.

For the Chennai event, researchers used high-resolution atmospheric simulations along with hydrological and hydraulic models. They conducted experiments with different aerosol concentrations to understand how these changes affected rainfall and flood simulations.

The study found that explicitly representing aerosols improved the simulated rainfall pattern at the basin scale by about 22 per cent compared with observations. When the resulting rainfall data were used in flood modelling, the accuracy of simulated inundation improved by up to 51 per cent.

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Chennai Flood Study: Why The Findings Matter

The researchers said that better representation of aerosol-cloud interactions could help improve forecasting of extreme rainfall and flooding in coastal cities. More accurate rainfall estimates can support flood management, reservoir operations and urban disaster preparedness.

However, the study is based on a detailed case study of the 2015 Chennai event. The researchers noted that the approach would need to be tested across other extreme rainfall and flood events to assess how widely the findings can be applied.

The research involved scientists from IIT Madras, GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Kathmandu University.

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