NEWS AND VIEWS
12 November 2025 Extreme rainfall poses the biggest risk to Mumbai’s most vulnerable people An assessment of death rates in India’s coastal megacity of Mumbai reveals the impact of rain, high tides and flooding. Climate change will probably exacerbate the effects. By Subimal Ghosh 0 Subimal Ghosh Subimal Ghosh is in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Centre for Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, India. View author publications PubMed Google Scholar
Extreme rainfall and flooding in large, densely populated cities around the world are well documented, but the associations between these events and mortality are not. Writing in Nature, Bearpark et al.1 reveal how rainfall and flooding affect mortality — particularly the risks faced by vulnerable people, such as women, children and people residing in informal ‘slum’ settlements — in Mumbai, a megacity with a high population density in India. Crucially, the researchers predict that risks will intensify under climate change.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03453-2
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Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.
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