113 1. Introduction Climate change is increasingly recognized as a major global challenge with profound implications for environmental stability, industrial operations, and infrastructure resilience. Among the most climate-sensitive sectors is the monsoon-dependent coal mining industry, particularly opencast mining, where operations are directly exposed to atmospheric and hydrological extremes. The rising frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, prolonged dry spells, and heatwaves have substantially altered conventional risk profiles in surface mining, affecting both operational continuity and safety performance (Menéndez & Muñoz, 2021). Recent scientific literature provides compelling evidence of rapidly shifting climate patterns across the Indian subcontinent. India has experienced a marked increase in the frequency and duration of heatwaves, with 554 heatwave days recorded nationwide in 2024, more than double the number observed in 2023 (Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, 2024), underscoring the intensifying influence of climate change. Even modest increases in mean temperature have been shown to disproportionately amplify extreme heat events, shifting temperature probability distributions toward more frequent and severe extremes, while reducing the occurrence of cooler conditions (IPCC, 2022; Figure 1). Figure 1: Schematic representation of shifting temperature distributions under climate change (Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2023 Emerging atmospheric processes are further exacerbating monsoon variability. Studies by Indian Institutes of Technology in collaboration with the University of California have identified atmospheric rivers – “Rivers in the Sky” – narrow corridors of concentrated moisture transport, as a dominant driver behind seven of the ten most severe monsoon floods in India between 1985 and 2020 (Gimeno et al., 2014; Lavers & Villarini, 2015). These systems, capable of transporting moisture volumes comparable to twice the flow of the Amazon River, have intensified due to
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