Greener, wetter, cooler Delhi

There is more rainfall, and more happy faces. For that, thank the forest cover in and around Delhi, which has seen a three-fold increase in the past decade, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 5, 2008, 01:39:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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You couldn’t have failed to notice that Delhi summers are getting cooler. There is more rainfall, and more happy faces. For that, thank the forest cover in and around Delhi, which has seen a three-fold increase in the past decade, apart from local climatic conditions, say climate scientists.

Trees retain water and pump moisture in atmosphere helping in building and attracting clouds. “It is a known phenomenon that areas with more trees have higher rainfall than arid zones,” said GB Pant, former director of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. But there were other factors too. “Rains take place because of a complex procedure. Other conditions also play an important role.”

The link is clear if you go through the weather data for the month of May and the increase in forest cover in Delhi.

The forest cover increased from 88 sq km in 1999 to 283 sq km, about 19.09 per cent of Delhi’s total area, in 2005. It increased to 300 sq km last year — and the city has managed to retain it so far this year.

Rainfall in May over the same period has also risen — from 14.8 mm in 1999 to 104 mm in 2008. It fell in 2003 but there has been a steady rise since the past two years.

Greener and wetter Delhi has made the summer much more bearable. The average temperature for May has steadily fallen — from 37.2 degree Celsius six years ago to 32.5 this year.

So, now you know what to do to make the summers even cooler for your kids.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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