‘Climate change is real and happening in India’

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the UN climate summit which is to be organized in New York on September 23 to give a political push to future negotiations, Indian scientists on Friday emphasized the need to take urgent steps to address the issue of climate change that has potential to adversely affect the country.
Taking stock of climate change and its implications for India, scientists from JNU, IIT Delhi, IARI and UCAS Bangalore highlighted country-specific points in the recent IPCC reports covering agriculture production, increase in sea-level, floods, droughts and cyclones, carbon dioxide content in air, temperature change and associated heat wave and melting of Himalayan glaciers.
“Climate change is real and happening in India. These issues have a direct impact on our daily lives and it is necessary that we start taking measures to address the issue,” said V Rajamani of School of Environmental Science, JNU.
Scientists, speaking at the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), sought to draw the attention of policy-makers and general public about many extreme weather events like the one that had happened in Uttarakhand in June last year and pointed out that climate change would lead the country to face many similar events if it does not take urgent “mitigation and adaptation” measures.
They highlighted that there has been a gradual warming of the atmosphere due to human activity, and the average global temperature has risen about 0.8 degree Celsius over the past 100 years.
It was noted during discussions that the years 1983-2012 was probably the warmest 30 years in the last 1,400 years.
Referring to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the scientists said the gradual temperature increase was related to the emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2 (carbon dioxide) and human activity.
The experts who participated in the deliberations at the INSA included R Ramesh (Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad), Kailash Bansal (IARI, New Delhi), R C Dhiman (Malaria Institute, New Delhi) and M S Seshashayee (University College of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore).