North India among climate impact hotspots

North India is among the few regions identified as hotspots vulnerable to extreme climate changes that could lead to drop in agricultural production and pose risks of severe ecosystem shifts, says a study. Vanita Srivastava reports.

North India is among the few regions identified as hotspots vulnerable to extreme climate changes that could lead to drop in agricultural production and pose risks of severe ecosystem shifts, says a study.

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The study — multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world — is likely to be published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The hotspots, including southern Amazon basin, southern Europe, Ethopian highlands and north India are geographically diverse and are driven by different combination of coinciding sectors.

“The study identifies the regions where impacts in multiple sectors overlap. For north India, this would mean drop in agricultural production (based on 4 crops: soy, wheat, rice, maize).

The overlap is based on changes in both sectors which change average conditions from what we are used to.

If this happens in multiple sectors in parallel, impacts can amplify each other or interact, resulting in increasing adaptation challenges,” lead-author Franziska Piontek of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.

While earlier studies explored individual impact of climate change, the new analysis is spread over four key impact sectors — water, agriculture, ecosystem and health.