Tuesday, November 16, 2010

India floods, droughts worse by 2030

Bloomberg: India may endure floods 30 percent more severe in magnitude and heightened drought conditions by 2030 due to climate change, which could affect crop yields, damage dams and harm infrastructure, the government said today.

“There is no country in the world that is as vulnerable on so many dimensions to climate change as India is,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said in a climate-change report prepared by 220 scientists in the country.

Every India region is expected to see more rainfall by the 2030s, each with 5 to 10 more days annually of “extreme precipitation,” the report said. Flooding will have a “very severe implication for existing infrastructure such as dams, bridges, roads.”

Rising greenhouse-gas levels are projected to raise the average annual temperature across India, which with 1.2 billion people is the second-most populous nation after China, by as much as 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the 2030s, it said….

Relief effort during the 2008 Kosi floods, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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