As a nation in the Global South, Pakistan faces limitations in infrastructure and technology to accurately forecast these challenges.
A new study led by Professor Jonghun Kam and his team at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has issued a big warning about Pakistan’s future.
By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, the research predicts Pakistan will periodically face “super floods” and “extreme droughts,” marking a new era of weather extremes driven by accelerating global warming.
Pakistan’s major rivers, such as the Indus, are vital lifelines for the country’s agriculture, energy, and daily living. However, climate change has increasingly complicated water management, especially in vulnerable high-altitude regions where melting glaciers directly impact river flows.
As a nation in the Global South, Pakistan also faces limitations in infrastructure and technology to accurately forecast these challenges.
Pakistani authorities have evacuated over a million people from Punjab province this week, officials said, as the region battles its worst flooding in four decades. The disaster has ravaged hundreds of villages and submerged vital grain crops.
Traditional climate models often fall short in such complex terrains, struggling to capture the nuances of steep mountains and narrow valleys. They frequently underestimate the effects of climate change or overestimate rainfall, leading to unreliable predictions.
To tackle this, Professor Kam’s team trained advanced AI models using past river flow data aligned with actual observations, significantly enhancing the accuracy of predictions related to extreme weather events.
The AI-based forecast reveals a disturbing pattern: the upper Indus River could experience major floods and severe droughts about every 15 years, while surrounding rivers might face such extremes even more frequently, roughly every 11 years.
This finding points to the urgent need for Pakistan’s government to adopt region-specific water management strategies, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Professor Kam emphasised that this AI technology is a vital tool not only for Pakistan but for other climate-vulnerable, data-poor regions worldwide. By improving climate predictions, it offers a pathway to better prepare for and mitigate the devastating impacts of increasingly erratic weather patterns linked to global warming.
This study stands as a crucial call to action, highlighting the pressing challenge of managing water resources in a rapidly changing climate.
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