Climate Change Increased Damages Caused by Cyclone Arnob by 33 Percent

The damage caused by Tropical Cyclone 'Arnob', which struck Eastern India on October 28, increased by 33 percent due to climate change. According to a report in The Hindu, a new study has revealed that this climate shift has resulted in additional direct economic losses worth millions of dollars compared to the pre-industrial climate baseline.

Heavy rainfall occurred during this cyclone, and its peak 1-minute sustained wind speed reached 202 kilometres per hour. This natural disaster caused severe damage to infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh. The event resulted in 5 deaths in Andhra Pradesh and affected 17 districts of Odisha.

This significant study was conducted by researchers from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and was published on Thursday, November 5, 2026. The researchers used the 'Imperial College Storm Model' (IRIS) for their analysis. Through this model, they compared the current conditions of Cyclone Arnob (which are 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels) with a counterfactual climate without human-induced warming.

The study states that climate change led to an increase of approximately 5 percent in the maximum wind speed of Cyclone Arnob. Additionally, when the cyclone made landfall, an 11 percent increase in the eyewall rainfall rate was observed. According to this research, the direct damage to physical assets in India was 33 percent higher than the pre-industrial climate baseline. Approximately 25 percent of the total economic loss has been directly attributed to climate change.

Dr. Nathan Sparks, a researcher at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, stated in a statement, “These findings serve as a powerful reminder of the cost of inaction. The costs of climate change are not merely hypothetical future projections - they are impacting the coastal communities of Eastern India today.”

The severity of this disaster can be gauged by the fact that vehicles became stranded on National Highway 16 (NH-16) near Icchapuram in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh due to flash floods.