Wildfire season starts early in Nepal

Kathmandu Valley got half its annual average rainfall in 36 hours on 28 September last year, unleashing deadly floods. Since then, there has not been a drop of rain.

A prolonged winter drought in central and eastern Nepal has sparked off an early start to the annual wildfire season, with multiple fires reported across the country, including around Kathmandu Valley.

A NASA Fire Information Resource Management System (FIRMS) infra-red satellite image on 20 January at noon shows at least 85 fires burning across the country, even in the western mountains which have seen snow and rain in the past weeks.

Usually, such fires are lit by grazers in early spring to ensure that new shoots sprout from the ashes when the rains come. But lack of soil moisture and high winds have fanned flames which have quickly spread up the slopes.

Nepal has doubled its forest cover in the past 30 years to 46% of its area. Depopulation of the mountain districts also means that with less harvesting of deadwood and leaves for fodder, forests have accumulated a lot of flammable dry undergrowth. 

Several westerly systems have passed through Nepal, but most have dumped much of the precipitation in the west of the country. 

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) has been monitoring the wildfires, but besides expressing concern about the lack of rain and counting the number of fires, there has not been much by way of preparation.

Fire prevention needs a nationwide awareness campaign and enforcement, but it is difficult to monitor fires when they are 5,000m up the mountains. When even countries like the US find it difficult to fight fires like the ones that ravaged Los Angeles in the past week, Nepal just does not have the resources to fight rapidly spreading fires in remote mountainous terrain.

Last spring saw a record number of wildfires across the country in April-May, many of them lasting days and blanketing the sky with smoke. The reason then was also an exceptionally dry winter.

When soot particles from wildfire smoke and air pollution are deposited on glaciers and snowfields in the mountains, they cause them to melt faster because of the reduction in their reflectivity.

This year, Nepalis and visitors to Nepal have been greeted by iconic mountains like Machapuchre, Annapurna and Gauri Shankar devoid of snow cover looking like black pyramids.