North India to face highest temperature rise, IPCC report

Northern and western India will face maximum increase in temperature by end of the century while southern India will face maximum increase in tropical nights (when number of 24 hour temperature is more than 20 degrees), the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 1, 2013, 22:29:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Northern and western India will face maximum increase in temperature by end of the century while southern India will face maximum increase in tropical nights (when number of 24 hour temperature is more than 20 degrees), the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said.

The findings are part of the IPCC’s Working Group-I report presenting detailed climate change scenarios for different regions across the globe including South Asia. There is a mid-term (2045-2065) projection and long term (2081-2100) with specific projections for India.

In mid-term, the report projects increase of 2-3°C with warmest temperature focused in the northern part of India and Pakistan. Long term projection is for temperature increase of 3-5°C.

“The warmest daily maximum temperature is projected to increase 4-5°C, with highest temperatures in northern India and Pakistan,” the report says.

The number of tropical nights (that is the number of 24-hour days above 20°C) is projected to increase from between 0 and 80 days, with most concentrated in the southern portion of the India.

The good news from the report coming after six years is that overall rainfall will increase in the Indian sub-continent. In mid-term the IPCC projects an increase of 10% to 20% in precipitation during winter months and 20% increase during September-November period.

In long term, the IPCC says the rainfall will increase by 10% in December to February period and upto 50% during September and November period, meaning the humid days will increase in India.

“Most of this precipitation is projected to occur in the western portion of the region,” the report says

Higher rainfall will not mean more rainy days. It would amount to higher incidence of extreme rainfall events like what happened in June in Uttarakhand this June. With loss of green cover, the annual runoff will be more than 40% of the total rainfall.

Another paradox emerging from the report is that despite more rainfall there would be more water stress areas in the region, especially north and central India.
The report also says that agriculture production would fall by about 9 to 25% in South Asia.

With increase in temperature by around 4%, the report said, the monsoon rainfall --- key to drive India’s food security --- will not be uniform and would witness 10% increase in inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability.

Unlike the past IPCC reports, the working group this time has not predicted any deadline for melting of Himalayan glaciers. The 2007 IPCC report had said that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, for which the panel had apologized.

This time, the report says that melting of Himalayan glaciers would impact 1.2 billion people in the region including China.

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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