Climate Change Projection In India

Climate Change Projections of India (2030)

Discuss about the Climate Change Projection in India.

One of the most complex problems that are faced by mankind today is climate change. India is not an exception as it is also expected to hit by massive climate change in the near future. According to Chaturvedi et al. (2012), understanding such as a multifaceted problem with vast and varied proportions and implications, assumes bigger importance for all stakeholders, especially for policy makers. A number of perceptions exist regarding the exact size and consequences of climate change. Yet, it is no secret that risks emanating from climate change are indeed thoughtful and needs urgent alleviation. This study will mainly focus on the affect of climate change in India during 2030 and 2070.

Climate change will have severe impacts on India in various areas. This study will focus on some of those areas which are hereby described below,

Sea level along the Indian cost has been rising at a rate of 1.3mm per year (Kumar et al. 2013). According to Salvi and Ghosh (2013), it is expected that the level of sea will rise further in the future. Projections indicate that frequency of cyclones is likely to decrease in 2030s while cyclonic intensity will rise. Satellite images clearly show that the sea levels are incessantly rising considerably higher than the average during the preceding half-century. As mentioned by Wada et al. (2013), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts that, as a result of ice sheet breakdown sea level will incease rapidly which will result if temperature rises in India. This will affect a lot of people as they will be displaced because of flooding. Intense tropical storm will be experienced in several coaster areas of India. It is expected that till 2030, northern suburbs of Mumbai like Versova beach and other populated areas are vulnerable to land loss and increased flooding because of sea level rise.

Irrigated rice in all the areas are expected to gain in yields marginally because of warming as compared to the rain fed corps. It will happen as irrigated rice tends to get benefits from CO2 fertilization effect (Li et al. 2016). Coconut productivity will also rise in western coasts; however it will come down in the eastern coastal region. Apple production will be reduced in the Himalayan areas. In case of naval fisheries some species will gain in yields as atmosphere warming will favour help improve their productivity. According to Sharmila et al. (2015), in India, climate change will lower people’s availability of food by 3.2%, fruit and vegetables by 4% and red meat by 0.7%.

Sea Level Changes

Water yield which is a purpose of rainfall, total surface run off, evapotranspiration and soil properties is expected to increase in the Himalayan region by 6% in 2030. However, it is also true that water yields will be varied across North Eastern region, Western Ghats and Coastal region. In some of these places it is projected that water yield will rise and in some these places water yields will be decreased. Moderate to severe drought harshness is also projected in 2030s for the Himalayan areas as compared to the other areas. All these areas will experience flooding which are beyond existing magnitudes by 10% to 30% (Narsimlu et al. 2013). Currently, available statistics on water demand shows that 83% of the available water in India is used for agriculture purpose. The government of India is planning to lower this demand to 68% by the year of 2030 (Moors et al. 2013). In order to meet this objective, augmentation of the remaining water resources by establishment of additional sources of water will take place. Figure 1 in appendix shows that ground water levels are declining across India and it is projected that 54% of India’s ground water wells will lose water level by one meter per year till 2030 (Mathison et al. 2013).

Food security is one of the leading concerns connected with weather change. In India, till 2030 it is expected that climate change will affect food security in complex ways. It will impact crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry and aquaculture and will cause serious social and economic consequences in the shape of reduce incomes, gnarled livelihoods, trade commotion and unfavourable health impacts (Gambhir 2012). According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, climate will worsen India’s existing problems of urban food industry. It will mostly affect the low income groups residing in informal settlements.

In order to understand climate change projections in India in 2050, the World Bank group executed Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics where scientists used best available evidence and supplemented it with advanced computer simulations to understand the impact of climate change in agriculture, water resources, cities and coastal ecosystems (Kumar et al. 2014).

India is already experiencing a warming climate and it is projected that until 2050, under 4 degree centigrade warming, the west coast and southern India will be shifted to new high-temperature climate regimes which will have significant impacts on agriculture.

Until 2030, a 2 degree rise in global average temperature will affect India’s summer monsoon as it will become highly unpredictable. As a result of this hasty change, according to (Rashid et al. 2015), monsoon could contribute a major crisis which will activate more recurrent droughts as well as greater flooding in large parts of India. It is anticipated that India’s northwest coast to the south eastern coastal could see higher than average rainfall. Dry years are projected to be drier and wet years are expected to be wetter.

Agriculture and Food

Climate changes will impact on parts of South Asia as it will become drier which will increase number of draughts. These draughts will be frequent in some parts, especially in north-western India, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

India’s 60% agriculture is rain-fed that makes the country highly dependable on ground water. According to Baldos and Hertel (2014), it is not easy to predict future ground water levels; however, it is projected that ground water levels will keep decreasing even in 2050 as result of increasing demand for water from a mounting population, more wealthy lifestyle and from service sectors and industry. It is evident that nearly 15% of India’s ground resources are overexploited even without climate change (Shindell et al. 2012). Therefore, it is necessary to use ground water efficiently to preserve water resources.

India is a country that is close to equator and that is why it is projected that until 2050 the country would see much higher rises in sea levels. As mentioned by Mathison et al. (2013), rise in sea level and storm surges would lead to saltwater imposition in the coastal areas which will affect agriculture, by demeaning groundwater eminence. It will also contaminate drinking water which will cause a rise in diarrhoea and cholera outbreaks. Cities such as Kolkata and Mumbai will be mostly vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise, tropical cyclones and revering flooding. 

Until 2050, rising temperature and lower rainfall will cause significant loss in India’s rice production. The same loss can be experienced in case of wheat production. Temperature above 34 degree is known to have a substantial negative effect on wheat yields. As it is projected that temperature in India will rise drastically in 2050, it will obviously affect wheat production in India (Narsimlu et al. 2013).

On the other hand, seasonal water scarcity and rising temperature can affect other crop yields which will jeopardise the country’s food security. India will have to import more than twice the amount of food-rain in order to survive the climate change and its effects on food production.

In 2050, water scarcity will become a major problem in India. An increased variability of monsoon rainfall will cause water shortage in most of the areas on India. Studies have mentioned that water security threat will be felt most in central India along with mountain ranges of the Western Ghats and India’s north-eastern states (Wada et al. 2013).

Water

Climate change will cause major health impacts in India as malnutrition and related health disorders such as child stunting will increase in the country. As mentioned by Chaturvedi et al. (2012), child stunting will increase by 35% by 2050 (Wada et al. 2013). Malaria and other vector-borne diseases will spread into areas where cold temperature had beforehand incomplete broadcast.   

South Asia is known to be a hotspot for migration of people from disaster affected areas. According to the reports published by World Urbanization Prospects of the UN Population Division, it is assumed that migrated people living in urban areas will rise up to 60 percent by 2030 and to 67% by 2050 (Salvi and Ghosh 2013). The same figure was only 30% in the year of 1950.

Conclusion

From the above study it is clear that India will face several issues due to climate change in the upcoming years. Several areas of the country will be hampered as a result of abrupt climate change. In order to deal with such problems Indian Government will have to take immediate steps for each department. For example, in order to deal with health problems improvements in hydro-meteorological systems for weather forecasting should be implemented. In order to deal with issues related to agriculture and food, crop diversification is needed along with enhanced soil management practices.

References

Baldos, U.L.C. and Hertel, T.W., 2014. Global food security in 2050: The role of agricultural productivity and climate change. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 58(4), pp.554-570.

Chaturvedi, R.K., Joshi, J., Jayaraman, M., Bala, G. and Ravindranath, N.H., 2012. Multi-model climate change projections for India under representative concentration pathways. Current Science, 103(7), pp.791-802.

Gambhir A, Napp TA, Emmott CJ, Anandarajah G., 2012. India’s CO 2 emissions pathways to 2050: Energy system, economic and fossil fuel impacts with and without carbon permit trading. Energy. 2014 Dec 1;77:791-801.

Kumar, P., Wiltshire, A., Mathison, C., Asharaf, S., Ahrens, B., Lucas-Picher, P., Christensen, J.H., Gobiet, A., Saeed, F., Hagemann, S. and Jacob, D., 2013. Downscaled climate change projections with uncertainty assessment over India using a high resolution multi-model approach.Science of the Total Environment, 468, pp.S18-S30.

Kumar, S.N., Aggarwal, P.K., Rani, D.S., Saxena, R., Chauhan, N. and Jain, S., 2014. Vulnerability of wheat production to climate change in India.Climate Research, 59(3), pp.173-187.

Li, G., Xie, S.P. and Du, Y., 2016. A robust but spurious pattern of climate change in model projections over the tropical Indian Ocean. Journal of Climate, (2016).

Mathison, C., Wiltshire, A., Dimri, A.P., Falloon, P., Jacob, D., Kumar, P., Moors, E., Ridley, J., Siderius, C., Stoffel, M. and Yasunari, T., 2013. Regional projections of North Indian climate for adaptation studies. Science of the Total Environment, 468, pp.S4-S17.

Moors, E., Singh, T., Siderius, C., Balakrishnan, S. and Mishra, A., 2013. Climate change and waterborne diarrhoea in northern India: Impacts and adaptation strategies. Science of the Total Environment, 468, pp.S139-S151.

Narsimlu, B., Gosain, A.K. and Chahar, B.R., 2013. Assessment of future climate change impacts on water resources of upper sind river basin, India using SWAT model. Water resources management, 27(10), pp.3647-3662.

Rashid, I., Romshoo, S.A., Chaturvedi, R.K., Ravindranath, N.H., Sukumar, R., Jayaraman, M., Lakshmi, T.V. and Sharma, J., 2015. Projected climate change impacts on vegetation distribution over Kashmir Himalayas. Climatic Change, 132(4), pp.601-613.

Salvi, K. and Ghosh, S., 2013. Highâ€Âresolution multisite daily rainfall projections in India with statistical downscaling for climate change impacts assessment. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 118(9), pp.3557-3578.

Sharmila, S., Joseph, S., Sahai, A.K., Abhilash, S. and Chattopadhyay, R., 2015. Future projection of Indian summer monsoon variability under climate change scenario: An assessment from CMIP5 climate models. Global and Planetary Change, 124, pp.62-78.

Shindell, D., Kuylenstierna, J.C., Vignati, E., van Dingenen, R., Amann, M., Klimont, Z., Anenberg, S.C., Muller, N., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Raes, F. and Schwartz, J., 2012. Simultaneously mitigating near-term climate change and improving human health and food security. Science, 335(6065), pp.183-189.

Wada, Y., Wisser, D., Eisner, S., Flörke, M., Gerten, D., Haddeland, I., Hanasaki, N., Masaki, Y., Portmann, F.T., Stacke, T. and Tessler, Z., 2013. Multimodel projections and uncertainties of irrigation water demand under climate change. Geophysical Research Letters, 40(17), pp.4626-4632.