Decoding the whimsical nature of India’s cyclones!

Raju Korti
As someone who evinces keen interest in Climate Physics, cyclones hold an abiding interest for me as a way to understand how oceans quietly script the fate of nations and the more I observe the recent churn in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, the more I realise that India is living through a climatic inflection point that is both scientifically fascinating and deeply unsettling because cyclones are no longer following the seasonal discipline we once took for granted. Since the early onset of the monsoon in the second half of May 2025, the number of cyclonic disturbances has risen sharply and almost rhythmically, beginning with Depression ARB 01 and Deep Depression BOB 01 in May, continuing through Deep Depression BOB 07 and Depression ARB 03 in October, and culminating in intense and damaging systems like Cyclone Shakti, Cyclone Montha and now the expected Cyclone Senyar around November 26. What is striking is not merely their frequency but the time window in which they are forming because cyclones typically prefer predictable seasons whereas this new behaviour is a climate signal that cannot be ignored.

(Pic representational)

The Bay of Bengal has always been India’s cyclone factory owing to its warm surface waters, abundant moisture, and favourable atmospheric structure. Between 1990 and 2020 it recorded 190 cyclones compared to the Arabian Sea’s 73, but what has changed is the velocity and intensity of this engine. Warmer waters are the raw fuel for cyclogenesis and the Bay of Bengal is now consistently warm enough to trigger and sustain more frequent storms, which explains why Cyclone Montha could intensify rapidly before hitting Kakinada and why a low-pressure system over the Strait of Malacca is already primed to turn into another depression by November 24. What is even more telling is the Arabian Sea’s newfound restlessness because historically it remained cooler during most of the year, limiting cyclone formation, yet in the last two decades its cyclone frequency and intensity have gone up appreciably owing to human-induced climate change that is warming its upper ocean layers faster than expected.

This year’s early monsoon itself was a clue that the ocean-atmosphere machinery was behaving in overdrive because an active Madden Julian Oscillation, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, and unusually strong cross-equatorial winds through the Somali Jet created a conveyor belt of moisture that pushed the monsoon ahead of schedule and simultaneously set the stage for more cyclonic spin-ups. When such background conditions persist, cyclones are no longer anomalies but expressions of a new normal that is deeply tied to global warming. In climate physics terms, every extra tenth of a degree in sea surface temperature increases the probability of a cyclonic system drawing enough latent heat to intensify quickly and unpredictably and this is exactly what India is experiencing. The grim reality is that once sea temperatures rise beyond a threshold, there is no known human intervention that can cool ocean surfaces on a regional scale because heat absorbed by the ocean is a global, not local, phenomenon and therefore part of the broader crisis of global warming that needs coordinated international mitigation.

Untimely cyclones wreak havoc on economies because they disrupt ports, power grids, transport networks and coastal industries and they strike hardest at the agricultural heartland which depends on predictable rain cycles. When storms like Shakti or Montha arrive in the wrong month, they flatten standing crops, ruin soil fertility through salinity intrusion and throw rural livelihoods into chaos. Each cyclone comes with an invisible economic signature in the form of damaged fisheries, lost workdays, reconstruction expenses, and insurance burdens. In the long run, a climate of frequent cyclones becomes a drag on GDP as governments are forced into perpetual relief and rehabilitation cycles while farmers grapple with the psychological toll of unpredictability.

Whether governments are alert to these disturbing shifts is a question that demands uncomfortable honesty. India’s meteorological systems are improving in tracking and forecasting but mitigation remains fragmented because true cyclone management means tackling the root cause, which is global warming. No coastal embankment can compensate for warmer oceans and no disaster management manual can keep up with a climate that is mutating faster than policy. What is required is not just national preparedness but a sustained global campaign to cut emissions, invest in renewable energy, restore coastal ecosystems and negotiate climate justice with more urgency because warming oceans do not recognise national borders and neither do cyclones.

The sudden proliferation of cyclones in 2025 is therefore not a coincidence but a climatic message written in the language of physics. It tells us the oceans are warmer, atmospheric rhythms are shifting and the boundaries of our old assumptions have dissolved. Cyclones were once seasonal events and are now year-round reminders that climate change is not a theory but a lived reality.

(NB: The picture is representational, since cyclones generally look and behave alike, differing only in their severity and the impact they leave behind. So there!)