By Dr. Indira Khurana*
As models fail to predict extreme weather events, it’s time to accelerate decentralised coping and adaptation measures
Climate and weather scientists were clueless in predicting extreme weather events that rocked the world in the last few months. These extreme weather events caught people unawares: Whether it was the heat wave in British Columbia, Canada; or floods in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands; China and India. The list of countries is long. The heat dome over Canada refused to budge as did the rainclouds over the above-mentioned European countries. Top climate scientists have admitted that they failed to predict the intensity of these events.
Various climate scientists, ecologists, data and number crunchers have been warning about the increase in extreme weather events as a consequence of global warming-induced climate change for a while now. But even they were not prepared for the extent to which their predictions proved to be right. They failed to predict, were almost clueless about the intensity of these events, because their computers were not powerful enough to accurately predict these. Their solution? Climate scientists want a new toy – super computers that will help them compute better. This silo approach may help in improving predictions of the weather, but the problem is not going to get away.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th report released by the United Nations on August 9, 2021 states some obvious facts: It’s now ‘Code Red’ for humanity, species may disappear forever, extreme weather events will increase, and the sea levels rise dramatically. The floods this year in different continents, the cyclones in the Bay of Bengal in 2020 and 2021 and extreme heat events across the globe already stand testimony to this.
Why weather predictions are important
Weather predictions help in effective and timely planning of livelihood and economic activities such as agriculture, directly related to food security. Even the Reserve Bank of India admits to the macroeconomic importance of a normal monsoon. An April 2020 RBI Bulletin states that ‘Climate change and the associated shift in weather pattern following an increase in average global temperature has emerged as a key risk to the macroeconomic outlook of both advanced and emerging economies.’
Weather predictions help in disaster preparedness, and in saving lives, livelihoods and assets. But when the disasters can no longer be accurately predicted, then the disaster response mechanism is caught unawares and has to scramble up resources, reducing their efficacy. While teams are ready to respond to earthquakes/ landslides preparing and responding to unprecedented heat waves, heavy rainfall leading to floods and storms can be planned better, if known in advance.
But the uncomfortable questions that needs to be asked is: How fast and committed we are in moving towards reducing our carbon footprints? More importantly, what are we doing to successfully cope and adapt to these climate change consequences. While the former largely depends on how global leadership and industry responds to this unsustainable growth model and the consequences thereof, community-centred coping and adaptation strategies need to be quickly adopted, even escalated.
The foundation of these approaches is water conservation and management, linked to nature rejuvenation. Given that the IPCC report states that some changes induced by global warming may take centuries and millennia to reverse, and in some cases may be irreversible even if we were to take corrective action measures, coping and adaptation has become all the more imperative.
Water is climate and climate is water
The new IPCC report reinforced several facts mentioned in previous reports. The language is now stronger than ever before, given that the evidence is now irrefutable, and the urgency for action. The report clearly lays the cause of climate change: Humans are responsible for the increase in global temperatures – the earth has warmed 1.09 degrees Centigrade since pre-industrial times, and changes such as sea level rise and glacier melting are now irreversible.
Other climate change induced impact on water include:
- Almost all of the recent extreme weather events can be ascribed to climate change.
- Increase it atmospheric moisture as the planet due to the rising temperature. The warmer atmosphere is able to hold 7 per cent more for each degree rise in temperature. This will result in wetter monsoons and increased frequency and intensity of floods and flash floods.
Melting of glaciers the world over. The decade between 2010-2019 witnessed an accelerated glacier mass loss.
- Increase in frequency and intensity of drought and occurrence in new areas, leading to loss of livelihoods, agriculture, food insecurity and nature degradation.
It’s now amply clear that climate change is intervening in the hydrological cycle in more ways than one, the consequences of which are visible.
Defining a ‘new normal’ that is equitable, secure and brings about stability
Extreme events have made it clear that there is now an urgent need for a global push for escalating coping and adaptation measures.
This ‘new normal’ of disasters reaching new geographies and new heights, of multiple and simultaneous disasters (COVID 19 and cyclones for example) should not be acceptable to society.
This IPCC report laid out different scenarios of carbon emissions and the implications thereof.
Global leadership needs to collectively come together putting aside their political, personal and national priorities to work for the planet and common future. While optimistically waiting for this to happen, and increasingly facing climate change-related extreme events, people need to respect nature’s boundaries, limit their resource footprint and work towards rejuvenation of natural resources, integral to coping and adaptation.
Interestingly, the IPCC Report has also emphasized the importance of indigenous knowledge in understanding and mitigating climate change. India’s indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom is replete with examples of living in harmony with nature and aligned to the ecology. Diverse cultures and food habits have an ecological basis.
Concerted efforts must be in managing water better, through conserving rain, improving water management and use. This will help in augmenting water availability and serve as a sponge for soaking up excess of water. In India for example several aquifers are declining and these ‘depleting and thirsty groundwater banks’ could be used for absorbing the rain, thus serving the dual purpose of reducing flooding intensity and replenishing depleting aquifers. Replete groundwater tables also help in regulating river flows. It will be important to link these efforts with the conservation and rejuvenation of other natural resources such as soils, forests and biodiversity. Evidence from India points to the possibility of changing the microclimate through these measures. Such efforts would thus help in reducing the scale, frequency and intensity of the disasters and in coping and adaptation. This ‘new normal’ of rejuvenation of nature and humanity and living within existing planetary boundaries in peace and security is what human should aspire for.
Access to better, faster and more powerful computers for extreme weather prediction is no longer enough. Unless we accelerate our movement towards a more nature aligned growth path the threat for the Hollywood style, Hollywoodesque ‘Code Red’ for humanity will not go away. As far as climate change is concerned, there is no Global North or Global South. The world is one, the planet is one. In protecting nature and each other, we are only protecting ourselves from what promises to be a protracted, prolonged, painful, fatal code red. Whether we choose to act or continue to remain in denial is up to us.
*Indira Khurana, PhD has been working on water and natural resources for more than two decades.
