Questions
Q1. According to Global Climate Risk Index 2020, India is the fifth most vulnerable country globally to climate change. Why is India highly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change? Also, suggest novel solutions to make the country climate resilient. (250 words) 15 marks
Q2. Though India has developed methods to predict cyclones, there is difficulty in predicting cloudbursts and the resultant flash floods. Explain the current method of flash flood prediction, enumerate the issues involved in their prediction. (10 marks)
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Model Solutions
Q1. According to Global Climate Risk Index 2020, India is the fifth most vulnerable country globally to climate change. Why is India highly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change? Also, suggest novel solutions to make the country climate resilient. (250 words) 15 marks
Model Structure
Introduction:
- Climate change is long term and widespread shifts in weather patterns across the globe. Though climate change can happen because of natural reasons, current accelerated climate change is a consequence of anthropogenic GHG emissions.
- As shown by the recent Global Climate Risk Index 2020, India is highly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change.
Main Body
Reasons for India’s vulnerability:
- India has a long coast line with a high density of population and high concentration of industries in the coastal zone.
- Also, the livelihood of a substantial portion of the coastal population depends upon maritime activities.
- Climate change is expected to cause sea level rise and increased frequency of climatic disasters like tropical cyclones making coastal areas extremely vulnerable.
- Around half of the Indian population depends upon agriculture.
- Climate change is expected to cause higher incidences of heat waves, droughts and erratic monsoon rainfalls impacting the agriculture as well as animal husbandry sector.
- The North-Indian plain is called ‘hearth of civilization’ and it is one of the most densely populated regions of the world.
- This area depends upon perennial rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers.
- Climate change has accelerated the retreat and melting of glaciers. This can lead to floods as well as water scarcity in the region.
- Given the low per capita income and economic constraints, India’s ability to absorb climatic shocks is not adequate.
- Islands and coastal areas will be lost to climate change induced sea level rise, creating a climate refugee crisis.
- This would mean increased human pressure on decreased natural resources.
- Climate change will also have negative health and economic implications for humans due to higher incidences of heat waves, forest fires, diseases like malaria etc. may increase and frequent disasters.
Novel solutions to make the country climate resilient: - Emission reduction: Integrated program including goals of Paris summit, Electric vehicle goals, ethanol blending etc. need to be integrated into one policy.
- Research and development of indigenous capacities for production and adoption of green technologies in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
- Early warning systems: IMD’s technology for Early warning needs to be upgraded frequently for coping up with the drastic direct and indirect impacts of climate change.
- Restrictive measures: Programmes for imposing restrictions on emission sources like factories, vehicles etc. need to be implemented for time-bound action against climate change impact.
- Preventive measures: Various measures cyclone barriers like mangroves, need to be employed after proper hazard mapping of various regions.
- Phased plan for developing region and vulnerability-specific Disaster Resilient Infrastructure needs to be implemented on the lines of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Conclusion:
- The need is to have a comprehensive approach towards the issue of climate change, encouraging international and intranational collaborations.
- Implement the five- pronged strategy including Prevention, Preparedness, Mitigation, Response and Recovery in order to deal with the adverse climate change impact on India.
Q2. Though India has developed methods to predict cyclones, there is difficulty in predicting cloudbursts and the resultant flash floods. Explain the current method of flash flood prediction, enumerate the issues involved in their prediction. (10 marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- Cloudburst is localized but there is a huge amount of precipitation in a very short time usually followed by thunder and flood conditions. By standard parameters, it is a cloudburst if it rains 10 cm or more per hour in around 10 km² area.
Main Body
- Though not very well developed, there are some methods to predict heavy rainfall events like-
- Indian Meteorological Department is the nodal agency to forecast rainfall events and heavy to very heavy rainfall events are forecast four to five days prior to actual occurrence.
- Extremely heavy rainfall events are forecast six to twelve hours in advance. These events have potential to trigger flash flood events.
- Another proposed method is data mining and deep learning techniques to understand seasonal patterns and enhance preparedness.
- But being a sudden activity with no build up time, there are few issues in prediction like-
- Any weather forecast involves a large geographical area, like a region, meteorological sub-division, or a district. But cloudburst is limited to a small area which further curtails the ability to predict cloudbursts and flash floods events.
- IMD lacks the capacity to predict the amount of rainfall which has an impact on the capacity to forecast flash floods.
- Cloudburst is localized which makes it financially tedious to install equipment at many places with less success ratio. Because cloudbursts are localized and random phenomena, there can't be a targeted prediction mechanism.
Way forward
- Urgent need to work on Flash Flood Guidance System developed by IMD and USA’s weather mechanism system.
- Mitigation measures can be adopted like non-structural real-time flood forecasting, dam break simulation, flood hazard and flood plain zoning etc.
Conclusion
- India has developed technology but climate change and increased frequency of extreme weather events makes prediction difficult. Thus there is a need to develop better capabilities and technical capacities to predict such events in advance.