Max Martin in the New Indian Express: With more than 2,300 dead in extremely hot weather across India, a recent Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) study predicts more intense and longer heat waves, more often and earlier in the year in future. In a changing climate, newer areas, including large swathes of southern India and both coasts will be severely hit, resulting in more heat stress and deaths, said the study, published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.“From climate model projections, we have pointed out that there is a possibility of high occurrences of heat waves in South India in future,” says Subimal Ghosh, associate professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT-B, and one of the paper’s authors.
Such a forecast is in line with global and Indian studies. Other recent assessments have predicted that intense heat waves will grow with rising global temperatures, up by 0.9 degrees Celsius since the start of the 20th century.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) records that from 1906 to 2005, the mean annual global surface-air temperature increased by about 0.74 degrees (land-surface air temperature increases more than sea-surface temperature). As a result, there will be significant changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including heat waves, as IPCC’s 2014 report warns.
“It is difficult to directly link this present single-year high heat-wave occurrence to climate change,” says Ghosh. “However, there is a good possibility that such heat waves may indicate the adverse impacts of global warming.” A rise in the frequency and intensity of heat waves would increase the risk of heat stroke and heat exhaustion, and even deaths from hot weather, the IIT-B team predicts, echoing concerns raised by IPCC....
Sunset on the Ganges, shot by ptwo, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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