Drying up? Upper Lake could shrink by 40% by 2050: Study

Bhopal: Upper Lake could shrink by 40% by 2050, especially during pre-monsoon dry spells, if global temperatures rise by 2°C—the threshold set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. It spells trouble for Bhopal's taps, fish stocks, biodiversity, and drought severity.The fate has been predicted by an AI tool developed jointly by scientists from IISER Bhopal and MANIT Bhopal as climate change tightens its grip on critical water supplies. The warning is stark as Upper Lake is a Ramsar site, part of the wetlands in city, and it also serves as a vital source providing nearly 40% of the city's drinking water. The joint study was recently published in an international journal ‘Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment'.The study claims that by 2050, seasonal water levels could swing wildly, with more frequent low-water periods, weaker monsoonal recharges, and rarer extreme floods."The lake faces more frequent dry spells and weaker recharges," cautioned a team member in the study, professor Somil Swarnkar. Led by Roshan Nath, Prof. Somil Swarnkar, Dr Vikas Poonia, and Dr Vinod K. Kurmi, the research confronted a major hurdle in the lead up to the study: Decades of satellite images from Landsat (1990–2022) were riddled with gaps from cloudy weather and data blackouts.Their solution—a hybrid AI powerhouse. A feed-forward neural network that could reconstructs missing historical data using weather variables like rainfall, temperature, evaporation, and soil moisture. Then, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, trained on the restored records, forecasts future scenarios under the +2°C warming."Urban sprawl, pollution, and climate shifts are squeezing these vital hubs for groundwater recharge and ecosystem balance. Yet this AI framework shines with 90% accuracy, proving it can revive spotty Landsat data via kernel fixes and Bayesian tweaks," Swarnkar added.What makes it different? The ‘plug-and-play' system works for any data-scarce lake or wetland, offering hope for India's sprawling water bodies and monitor-poor developing nations. Policymakers gain a ‘crystal ball' to avert shortages, devise green policies, and meet UN sustainability targets.In an era of scorching summers and faltering monsoons, this blend of satellites, climate data, and AI isn't just tech—it could be a toolkit for survival, researchers argued. "Water security defines our era," the team stressed. Cities can now turn predictions into action before lakes run dry, they added.