Climate Change: Global Catastrophe that make the world sink or sail together

Climate Change: Global Catastrophe that make the world sink or sail together

N. Bhadran Nair

A severe cyclonic storm, Cyclone Dana, made a landfall in Odisha and West Bengal just a few hours ago. Prior to this, South Indian states experienced heavy downpours. Over the past decade, there has bee a steady rise in extreme weather conditions across the Southern Peninsula. N. Bhadran Nair, the executive editor of the India Science Journal, examines this trend for our readers.

Coastal areas of West Bengal and Odisha are on alert for the impending Cyclone Dana, which is going to make landfall on the night of 24-25 October, 2024. According to India’s national weather forecast agency, India Meteorological Department, the cyclone may bring fierce winds, high storm surges and torrential rains in both the eastern states.

Cyclone Dana is the third cyclone to form in the North Indian Ocean region and the second to make landfall along the Indian coast in 2024. It is the first cyclone in the post-monsoon cyclone season.

Experts do not disagree on the potential of manmade global warming to magnify the destructive power of the tropical storms known variously around the world as cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons.

Kerala witnessed the worst landslides on July 30 this year, perishing 231 lives and 130 people still missing. The landslides devastated several villages completely, damaging residential settlements and farmland in the district which lies on the Western Ghats.

“Climate change is drastically changing rainfall patterns in Wayanad. What was once a cool, humid environment with year-round drizzles and monsoon rains, is turning into one marked by drier, hotter summers and intense downpours during the monsoons. This change has increased the risk of landslides. Dry soils absorb less water and heavy rainfalls cause run-offs that can lead to landslides,” said Mariam Zachariah, Research Associate, Imperial College London.

Southern peninsular region of India has witnessed a steady rise in extreme weather events during the last decade. Besides Kerala, neighbouring states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh also witnessed heavy to very heavy rains during the recent months.

“Numerous studies have established that the rise in global average temperatures due to human-induced climate change has led to an increase in the number of extreme rainfall events associated with monsoon, thunderstorms, and short-spanned local cloudbursts. These events, ranging from a few hours to a few days, have become more frequent in the recent decades over the subcontinent,” writes Climate Trends, a research-based consulting initiative focussing on environment, climate change and sustainable development.

India’s average temperature has risen by around 0.7°C during 1901–2018. By the end of the 21st century, the average temperature over India is projected to rise by approximately 4.4°C.

A World Weather Attribution study (2024) has found that human-induced climate change influenced the events, making them around 30 times more likely and much hotter.

By the end of the 21st century, the frequencies of occurrence of warm days and warm nights are projected to increase by 55 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Heat waves have claimed more lives in India than other natural hazards, with the exception of tropical cyclones.

 Among the major states in India, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Kerala, and Maharashtra had the maximum mortality rates due to extreme weather events.

Heatwaves are known to be the ‘Silent killers’ amongst the natural disasters triggered by human-caused climate change. The impact of rising temperatures and increasing frequency, duration and intensity of hot spells poses a challenge to human safety and sustainability.

According to research, ‘An assessment of long-term changes in mortalities due to extreme weather events in India,’ mortality due to heat waves has increased by 62.2 percent between 2000 and 2019. The study of 50 years’ data – 1970-2019 by scientists from India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, India Meteorological Department, National Crop Forecast Centre of Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and School of Environmental Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University was published by Weather and Climate Extremes of ScienceDirect.

A 2-degree Celsius rise in the world’s average temperatures will make India’s summer monsoon highly unpredictable. At 4-degree Celsius warming, an extremely wet monsoon that used to have a chance of occurring only once in 100 years is projected to occur every 10 years by the end of the century.

Glaciers disappeared 65 percent faster in the 2010s than in the previous decade. On current emissions pathways, 80 percent of glaciers’ current volume will be gone by 2100. Global observations of melting glaciers suggest that climate change is well underway in the region, with glaciers receding at an average rate of 10–15 meters per year. If the rate increases, flooding is likely in river valleys, followed by diminished flows, resulting in water scarcity for drinking and irrigation.

The extreme weather events have compounding impacts on human lives, like health, urbanisation-driven warming of cities, loss of labour hours, marine heatwaves resulting in habitat destruction of marine lives, agriculture, etc.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in an address in New York on the World Environment Day 2024 had warned, reversal of climate disaster “is still just about possible,” but only if we fight harder. It all depends on decisions taken by political leaders during this decade.  "The next 18 months are critical in the fight to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5C (2.7F) and avoid the worst of climate chaos," said Guterres. “In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger, we are the danger. But, we are also the solution,” he said.

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*The author is the Executive Editor of Indian Science Journal.

Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons