‘It is a sign of things to come’

You don’t have to wait long to witness climate change impacting your life, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 19, 2008, 23:22:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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You don’t have to wait long to witness climate change impacting your life. Two climatic events in the last fortnight — cyclone Nargis that claimed 20,000 lives in Myanmar, and torrential rains and thunderstorm — indicate the impact of climate change is becoming visible.

Although RK Pauchari, head of Nobel Prize winning organisation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said to blame intensity of Cyclone Nargis on climate change, Mark Lander, a meteorology professor at University of Guam, UK, found the link. Sea surface temperature in Bay of Bengal was over one degree Celsius above average when Cyclone Nargis intensified before landfall, Lander said. He was quoting National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s global satellite map.

In a 2007 report, IPCC had said the rise in sea surface temperatures causes increase in intensity of cyclones. It had quoted evidence suggesting tropical cyclones in North Atlantic had intensified because of rise in tropical sea surface temperatures.

Even Pachauri admitted climate change has resulted in increase in cyclones and may have contributed to its intensity.

Sunita Narain of Centre for Science and Environment said, “What happened in Myanmar was a clear indication that climate change i0s showing its impact in the region. It is a sign of things to come. Last year, Bangladesh was devastated by a tropical cyclone. It will continue if rich countries fail to cut greenhouse emissions.”

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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