Land Surface Atmosphere Transfer Interaction during Pre monsoon Thunderstorm Activity over Eastern India

Abstract

Extreme weather events are diverse and enigmatic in nature and has always been a case of newlinewonder and fear since time immemorial. Thunderstorms are one of those weather events that newlinehave been looked at as Act of God s Wrath and related to several mythological figures and newlinedeities such as Zeus and Lord Indra. Loss of lives and property due to thunderstorms are a newlinemajor issue in different parts of the world. In case of India, Eastern India faces regular newlinethunderstorms specially during pre-monsoon season and these violent storms adversely affects newlinethe general population. At Ranchi, Jharkhand thunderstorms known as Kal Baisakhis frequent newlineduring summer months of March to May. These storms occurring during peak summer days newlinecauses relief in terms of rain that is utilized in agriculture fields. Often, intense storms are newlineaccompanied by lightning and hails causing destruction of fields, death of cattle and human newlinealike. There have been limited studies on the dynamics of the storm events specially in case of newlineRanchi and this study was aimed at utilizing several analysis methods to gather a deeper newlineunderstanding of the weather patterns of Ranchi, Jharkhand and studying the land surface newlineprocesses during the thunderstorm events of pre-monsoon. Land surface processes were studies newlineusing observational from AWS located at BIT Mesra as part of project Department of Science newlineand Technology, Government of India, New Delhi funded multi-institutional mega field newlinecampaign on Continental Tropical Convergence Zone (CTCZ) project titled Observational newlinestudy of land surface atmosphere interaction in the monsoon trough along its active eastern newlineend to the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi. newline