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Storms, heavy rains, landslides, floods, winter, heatwaves, cyclones, drought, dust, hail or blizzards: India is experiencing almost any extreme weather phenomenon every day in the first nine months of 2022, according to a report based in New Delhi Center for Science and Environment (CSE).
Collecting data from the Indian Meteorological Department and the Home Ministry’s Disaster Management Division, this study revealed that out of 273 days between 1uh January and September 30 241, or 88% of the time, are marked by climate events “extreme”, well, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a phenomenon “rare in certain place and time”. “As a result of climate change, extreme events that would normally occur once every hundred years are starting to occur once every five years”, concluded CSE.
This data will weigh heavily on India the “loss and damage” debate. – permanent damage caused by climate change affecting developing countries – which opened at COP27, even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose not to travel to Sharm El-Sheikh, in Egypt, where the peak is.
Hundreds of people died
The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh was hit the most, with episodes every two days, but it was the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh that had the highest toll (359 dead), followed by Assam, where the major disaster occurred. the monsoon caused 301 deaths in June.
The economic and human toll is significant but underestimated, according to the authors, because the data is fragmentary: a total of 2,755 casualties, 1.8 million hectares of crops affected, 416,667 houses destroyed and 69,007 dead cattle. .
Since the beginning of 2022, two extraordinary events have alternated: one of the wettest months in January, with a rainfall rate of 129% above the average, and the driest and hottest month in March for over one hundred and twenty years. The whole of northern and eastern India was hit by an initial, intense and long heat wave. March, which is usually a temperate month at the end of northern India’s winter, turned into a furnace. The trend continued in April and May as record high temperatures of nearly 49°C were recorded in parts of New Delhi.
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