2018 will be even worse unless human induced climate change is reined in for the good of human existence
In an overall assessment of the impact extreme climate has had, the year 2017 will go down in history as the warmest non-El Niño year on record globally. This has been proven by twelve months of extreme weather conditions all over the world in the form of drought and floods. The year ended with unusually warm winters for many countries such as India and Australia besides excessively dry and hot spell for many other countries. Many studies are now pointing towards the interrelationship between these weather and climate extremities and the role of humans in precipitating the same.
The year 2017 also witnessed a spate of hurricanes across the world. The Atlantic Ocean had a particularly active hurricane season, with several intense instances of hurricanes causing havoc. Hurricane Harvey struck Texas and its slow trajectory resulted in record-breaking rainfall over Houston and neighboring areas. Apart from these, hurricanes Irma and Maria, both of which reached the strongest Category 5 status, brought severe weather to the Caribbean and southeastern United States just a couple of weeks apart. Island nations and territories in the region are still recovering from the devastation.
Around the same time, the Indian subcontinent experienced a particularly wet monsoon season. Flooding in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal killed more than 1,000 people and affected tens of millions more.Other parts of the world experienced their own severe weather events. Whether it was summer heat in Europe or wildfires in California, 2017 dished up plenty of climatic extremes.
In many cases, especially for heat extremes, the human influence can be readily be identified and shows that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of such events.
The last year showed what disturbed environment can cause in the form of extreme weather and climate related events. These conditions cannot become a norm and continue in 2018 as well but to prevent that the same the adverse human footprint and influence on the environment has to be reduced. The challenge for year 2018 is to maintain economic growth that is in harmony with the environment and its interests. But what makes it difficult is that extreme weather events are difficult to predicteven on the scale of days or weeks in advance, let alone months.
Rising global average temperatures, along with our understanding of the effect of greenhouse gas emissions, are one of our clearest lines of evidence for human-caused climate change. The recently released Global Climate Risk Index 2018 report released in Germany has put India amongst the sixth most vulnerable countries after Haiti, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Sri lanka and Vietnam. The report, prepared by a group of researchers on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), has estimated that more than 5.24 lakh people died across the world, as a direct result of more than 11,000 extreme weather events accounting to loss of around US$ 3.16 trillion during this period.
In India 2,119 people were killed during 2016, a number higher than any other country, losing $21,500 million the third highest financial loss after those suffered by China and the US. The report ranked the US fifth in fatalities from climate change impacts during 2016. The report mentions the heat waves in South Asia which persisted until the beginning of summer 2016, breaking a record of 51°C in Rajasthan, in May 2016. Over a thousand people died of hyperthermia or dehydration. In total, 1,800 fatalities were reported, especially in Southeast India.
The persisting drought and heat waves affected over 330 million people. They were followed by an extreme monsoon season lasting from June to October in eastern, western and central India. At least 300 people died due to the heavy rainfall and landslides and millions of people were affected by washed away crops, destroyed roads or disrupted electricity and phone lines. On 12th December 2016, cyclone Vardah, one of the costliest cyclones ever in the North Indian Ocean basin, made landfall in Chennai due to which several liveswere lost and infrastructure was severely damaged. The report also mentions that sea surface temperatures seem to play a key role in intensifying storms and concluded that rising sea level, which is partly caused by climate change, was responsible for the increased intensity of floods, storms and droughts.
For the good of human existence and in the best interests of the environment, the year 2018 will have to be better than 2017 and this not possible unless human induced climate change is reined in.
(The writer is an environmental journalist)