Warm Song of Summer Rain

Dry and parched wide city alleys,
Weep under the erring swelter.
Some mirage lakes troll at best,
Teasing the fated summer thirst.
Stunned by the fondling breezes,
Kisses of drizzle daze the torrid.
Petting the gush of dusky pillows,
High tears rush. Of lost playmates.
A sway brushes the crust of Earth,
Cleansing the dust,dirt and pores.
Sleets of shower vamp out in swift,
Shrouding the land with still mist.
Puffs of virgin sponges subtly pace,
Breaching glimpses of simmering sun.
Pigmented arches swell up in layers,
Improvising a fable of rich fantasy.
Ambience juggles the sentiments plain,
Greeting the Warm Song of Summer Rain.

Counting Glaciers: Study in the Himalayan region

There are thousands of glacial lakes in the Himalayan region. Owing to the rise in average global temperatures and human interference, the number of glacial lakes is increasing. There is an immediate need to accurately estimate and monitor glacial lakes to prevent possible disasters. Presently, remote sensing is used to monitor changes in glacial movements. But, the spectral nature of shadow and water in a satellite image
results in wrong estimates of glacial lakes.

To overcome this problem, Prateek Verma and Sanjay Kumar Ghosh from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee used a combination of two other algorithms to identify lakes from satellite data and segregated shadow pixels from water areas. The double-window flexible pace search algorithm sets a threshold beyond which it marks pixels from data as water and the edge detection algorithm filters out remaining shadow pixels from water pixels. This way the scientists ensure they can accurately identify and track the number of glacial lakes in an area. The scientists used multispectral images of the Gangothri basin from the database of the Sentinel 2A, a European Space Agency satellite.

Using these, the scientists were able to estimate a total of 101 glacial lakes in the Bhagirathi Basin which was in agreement with data from reports using other techniques.
While the accuracy of the method depends on the data and quality of satellite images, the technique is definitely a major progress in identifying glacial lakes for preventing potential hazards.

DOI: 10.1080/10106049.2018.1469677

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 117, NO. 4, 25 AUGUST 2019