India will face heat waves more frequently in the coming years, thanks to climate change, experts have claimed.
India will face heat waves more frequently in the coming years, thanks to climate change, experts have claimed.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, have published a study in which they claim there will be an increase in occurrences of heatwaves in India caused by warming of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans.
This study is in addition to the research published by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, which published a paper on the warming of the western Indian Ocean causing decreasing monsoon rainfall over India.
While an increase in sea surface temperatures in Indian and Pacific Oceans generally causes an increase in heatwaves across the country, IITM researchers found that warming of the Indian Ocean has a direct impact on North India.
Meanwhile, El Nino phenomenon is the main reason behind increasing heatwaves over southeast of India.
The warm winds surrounding heated regions of Indian and Pacific oceans cause various weather anomalies by the time they reach the country’s coast and do not allow sea breeze to enter the peninsula. These atmospheric anomalies combined with clear skies and dry soil during the summer, cause heat waves.
The researchers, after analysing heatwave trends between 1960 and 2013, found that over northwest India, the frequency of heatwaves increased by one event in 20 years and the average duration of heatwaves increased by two days every decade.
In 2015, heat waves claimed the lives of nearly 2,300 people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh alone. An earlier study by IIM Ahmedabad predicted a whopping 140 per cent increase in loss of life due to heat waves by 2080. Dr M. Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences and one of the researchers of the paper said, “We need good observations and prediction models if we need to tackle the rising number of heat waves and prevent the death toll that comes with it.”
