IPCC report flags imminent threats for India

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A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the 1.5°C threshold was likely to be breached before 2040 while highlighting the dangers of global warming. India is not immune to the imminent threats the world is facing.

“Heat extremes have increased while cold extremes have decreased, and these trends will continue over the coming decades,’’ the report mentioned this for the Indian subcontinent.

“For India, the increase in heat waves is marked by other emissions like aerosol emissions. If there is a reduction in aerosols, we will see a further increase in heat waves,’’ Dr Friederike Otto, associate director, Environment Change Institute, University of Oxford, said.

Dr Swapna Panickal of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, one of the authors of the report, said, “In the Indian Ocean, the sea temperature is heating at a higher rate than other areas, and therefore may influence other regions. The South West Monsoon has declined over the past few decades because of the increase of aerosols, but once this reduces, we will experience heavy monsoon rainfall.”

The global mean sea level in the Indian Ocean is rising at 3.7 mm annually, Panickal further said. Extreme sea-level events, that previously occurred once every 100 years, will now be seen nearly every year.

The dangerous risk factor for India is the rising sea level that threatens to submerge 12 coastal cities by the end of the century according to a report in India Today. The cities, identified by NASA using an IPCC report, could be nearly three feet underwater by the century’s end. The cities include Kandla, Okha, Bhaunagar, Mumbai, Mormugao, Mangalore, Kochi, Paradip, Khidirpur, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, and Tuticorin.

The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep below 2°C and strive for 1.5°C to prevent rapid climate change.

The IPCC report has indicated that the latter target is fast slipping out of reach because countries are not cutting down carbon emissions fast enough.

The third-largest carbon emitter of the world, after China and the US, India has maintained that it is on course to outperform its Paris climate agreement pledge to reduce its carbon footprint by 33-35% from 2005 levels by 2030.