The Drying of the Ganga: A Crisis Driven by Climate Change and Human Action
UPSC Relevance
Prelims: Indian Geography (River Systems - Ganga); Environment & Ecology (Climate Change, Indian Ocean Warming, Aerosol Pollution, Water Scarcity); General Science (Dendrochronology).
Mains:
General Studies Paper 1 (Geography): Salient features of world’s physical geography; Geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (like river systems and water bodies).
General Studies Paper 3 (Environment, Economy, Disaster Management): Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, climate change; Water security; Disaster and disaster management (Drought). This is a core topic for both GS1 and GS3.
Key Highlights from the News
A new study by researchers at IIT Gandhinagar finds that the Ganga river's water flow is at its lowest level in the last thousand years, and the river is drying up at an unprecedented rate.
The rate of the river drying up has increased significantly since the 1990s. The drought of 2004-2010 was the most severe in the last 1,300 years.
Main reasons behind this crisis:
Weaker summer monsoons.
Rapid Indian Ocean warming.
Aerosol pollution.
Groundwater pumping, which reduces the river's baseflow.
Land-use changes.
Researchers studied the Ganga's water flow from 700 AD using tree-ring records.
This finding questions the reliability of many existing global climate models, as they do not predict this drying trend.
Therefore, the study states that adaptive water management is required for water management in the Ganga basin, in accordance with changing circumstances.
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