Lok Sabha Question No. 701 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2021-02-05
Subject: Extreme Climatic Events
Ministry: EARTH SCIENCES
Asked by: E. T. Mohammed Basheer

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO.701 TO BE ANSWERED ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2021

## EXTREME CLIMATIC EVENTS

## 701. SHRI E.T. MOHAMMED BASHEER:

## Will the Minister of EARTH SCIENCES be pleased to state:

- (a)          whether  the  Government  is  aware  that  extreme  climatic  events  have  increased significantly across India at the turn of millennium/in the 21 st century;
- (b)          if so, the details thereof; and
- (c)          the steps taken by the Government to Control the adverse effects of the various Natural Calamities like Floods, droughts across the country?

## ANSWER MINISTER FOR MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES (DR. HARSH VARDHAN)

- (a) Yes, Sir. Extreme climatic events or disaster weather events have increased significantly across India during 21 st century.
- (b) Increase  in  various  extreme  weather  and  climate  events  such  as  heavy  rainfall,  floods, droughts, cyclones, heat waves and cold waves have been observed in the country in line with the increase in the extreme events observed over various parts of the globe.

Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), has recently published a Climate Change assessment report entitled "Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region" which covers all the aspects of regional climate change including the climatic extremes across India. The preparation of this report was led by the Center for Climate Change Research (CCCR) at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune. This report is the first of its kind where a comprehensive discussion has been made regarding the impact of human-induced global  climate  change  on  the  regional  climate  and  monsoon  of  the  Indian  subcontinent, adjoining  Indian  Ocean  and  the  Himalayas.  Based  on  the  available  climate  records,  the report documents that the surface air temperature over India has risen by about 0.7 °C during

1901-2018 which is accompanied with an increase in atmospheric moisture content. The sea  surface  temperatures  in  the  tropical  Indian  Ocean  have  also  increased  by  about  1°C during 1951-2015. Clear signatures of human-induced changes in climate have emerged over the Indian region on account of anthropogenic GHG and aerosol forcing, and changes in land use and land cover which have contributed to an increase in the climatic extremes.

The number of Cyclones and Number of stations reported very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall events since 2012 is given in Annexure-I . It can be seen that during recent years' frequency of cyclones and stations reporting very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall has been increased. Also the analysis of past data of cyclones over North Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea) during the period from 1891 to 2020 indicates that, frequency of Very Severe Cyclonic Storms has increased in recent few years over the Arabian Sea, since 1990.

Statistics of the number of days associated with the heat wave and cold waves (state wise) per  annum  for  decades  1971-80,  1981-90,  1991-00,2001-10  and  2011-19  are  given  in Annexure-II & III .  It  is  found  that,  states  like  Rajasthan  or  Andhra Pradesh and Union Territories (UT) like Delhi is reporting increased number of Heat Waves and Haryana, J&K and Uttar Pradesh report increased number of cold waves during the recent years.

Future projections of regional climate, performed under different climate change scenarios, too indicate robust changes in the mean, variability and extremes of several key climatic parameters  over  the  Indian  subcontinent  and  adjoining  areas  (e.g.  land  temperature  and precipitation,  monsoons,  Indian  Ocean  temperature  and  sea  level,  tropical  cyclones, Himalayan cryosphere, etc).

- (c) To minimize the adverse effect of the hazardous extreme weather events, India Meteorological  Department  (IMD)  is  effectively  functioning  in  the  country  maintaining accurate  weather  forecasting  along  with  early  detection  of  natural  disasters. IMD  is dedicated for monitoring, detection and forecasting of weather and climate including early warning for severe weather events such as, heavy rainfall, extreme temperature, thunderstorms,  cyclones  etc.  The  weather  forecasting  and  early  warning  systems  in  the country  are  comparable  to  most  of  the  developed  countries  in  the  world.  Efforts  are continuously  made  to  enhance  the  level  of  efficiency  of  the  forecasting  systems  and  to improve skill of weather forecast. During the past few years, IMD has been continuously improving weather prediction services in terms of accuracy, lead time and associated impact. The  accuracy  of  the  weather  forecast  is  more  than  80%  qualitatively  and  65-70% quantitatively for various regions in the country. The forecasts and warnings are issued by IMD at the  national,  State  and  district  levels.  It  has  a  network  of  State  Meteorological Centres for better coordination with State and district level agencies. With the upgradation of  observations  and  prediction  system  noticeable  improvements  have  been  made  in  the recent past in the skill of prediction, especially with respect to heavy-rainfall, heat-wave, thunderstorm and cyclones.

Following are the IMD's specialized services in the areas of extreme weather conditions :

-  To cater the services of hydro-meteorological events occurring in short duration of time, IMD is issuing Flash Flood Guidance (FFG) by which a diagnostic value within a watershed required to produce flooding at the outlet of the catchment is estimated, to support the flood warning services.
-  IMD provides actual and forecast rainfall information in different spatial and temporal scale like districts, States & meteorological subdivisions level and daily, weekly & seasonal scale to the Ministry of Agriculture for drought monitoring.
-  Heat wave is one of the severe weather phenomena for which IMD issues early warning. In the country, appreciable rise in maximum temperatures as well as heat waves are found to be  more  in  the  months  of  April,  May  &  June.  IMD  is  issuing  Seasonal  Outlook  for temperatures for the months of April, May & June in the last week of March for planning purpose, since 2016.
-  As an adaptive measure, IMD in collaboration with local health departments have started heat action plan in many parts of the country to forewarn about the heat waves and also advising action to be taken during such occasions.  Heat action plan became operational since  2013.  NDMA and IMD are working with 23 states prone to high temperatures leading  to  heat-wave conditions to develop heat action plans.
-  To mitigate the casualties due to thunderstorm and associated severe weather phenomena, IMD issues three hourly nowcasts for severe weather including thunderstorm and associated weather phenomena for about 894 stations and all districts in India on regular basis utilizing Radar and satellite data as well as ground based observations. These nowcasts are provided in real time to the users through the Website of IMD.
-  IMD  has  demonstrated  its  capability  to  provide  early  warning  for  Cyclones  with  high precision  and  has  earned  worldwide  accolades  globally  and  nationally  for  very  effective state of art early warning system for monitoring and prediction of cyclones. The cyclone forecast  accuracy  has  significantly  improved  in  recent  years  as  has  been  demonstrated during cyclones Phailin (2013), Hudhud (2014), Vardah (2016), Titli (2018), Fani & Bulbul (2019) and Amphan, Nisarga & Nivar (2020). During recent years, the loss of life has been drastically reduced being limited to double digit figure in the recent years.

Regarding advance broadcasting / dissemination of weather forecasts and warnings, IMD is always in a continuous process of improvement. At present the forecasts and warnings are broadcasted or disseminated to users including disaster managers by e-mail on regular basis. In addition to this, SMS, WhatsApp and social media & website platforms are effectively used for forecast dissemination.

In addition to this, as and when the situation arises, Press Releases are issued by IMD and the same is also disseminated by all the platforms mentioned above.

IMD has launched seven of its services (Current Weather, Nowcast, City Forecast, Rainfall Information, Tourism Forecast, Warnings and Cyclone) with ' UMANG '  mobile App for use by public.

mobile  App ' for Agromet advisory dissemination and

Moreover, in 2020, India Meteorological Department  had developed ' MAUSAM ' for weather forecasting, ' Meghdoot ' Damin i' for lightning alert.

*****

Annexure-I

|      | Number of Cyclones   | Number of Cyclones   | Number of stations Reported during SW Monsoon season (June to September)   | Number of stations Reported during SW Monsoon season (June to September)   |
|------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| YEAR | TOTAL                | Severe Cyclone       | Very Heavy Rainfall (115.6-204.4 mm)                                       | Extremely Heavy Rainfall (204.5 mmor more)                                 |
| 2012 | 2                    | 0                    | 1251                                                                       | 185                                                                        |
| 2013 | 5                    | 4                    | 1519                                                                       | 239                                                                        |
| 2014 | 3                    | 2                    | 1438                                                                       | 245                                                                        |
| 2015 | 4                    | 2                    | 1320                                                                       | 257                                                                        |
| 2016 | 4                    | 1                    | 1864                                                                       | 226                                                                        |
| 2017 | 3                    | 2                    | 1824                                                                       | 261                                                                        |
| 2018 | 7                    | 6                    | 2181                                                                       | 321                                                                        |
| 2019 | 8                    | 6                    | 3056                                                                       | 554                                                                        |
| 2020 | 5                    | 5                    | 1912                                                                       | 341                                                                        |

Annexure-II

| Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   | Heat Wave Days   |
|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|
| S. No.           | State / UT       | 1971-80          | 1981-90          | 1991-00          | 2001-10          | 2011-19          |
| 1                | Andhra Pradesh   | 10               | 9                | 9                | 9                | 11               |
| 2                | Bihar            | 7                | 5                | 4                | 6                | 8                |
| 3                | Chhattisgarh     | 2                | 3                | 3                | 5                | 3                |
| 4                | Delhi            | 4                | 3                | 6                | 7                | 6                |
| 5                | Gujarat          | 2                | 2                | 2                | 3                | 2                |
| 6                | Haryana          | 8                | 9                | 10               | 12               | 8                |
| 7                | Jharkhand        | 5                | 3                | 2                | 7                | 9                |
| 8                | Karnataka        | 1                | 1                | 2                | 1                | 1                |
| 9                | Kerala           | 0                | 0                | 0                | 0                | 0                |
| 10               | Madhya Pradesh   | 4                | 4                | 5                | 6                | 7                |
| 11               | Maharashtra      | 4                | 3                | 4                | 6                | 6                |
| 12               | Odisha           | 9                | 5                | 5                | 11               | 11               |
| 13               | Punjab           | 8                | 5                | 6                | 9                | 8                |
| 14               | Rajasthan        | 6                | 8                | 10               | 10               | 12               |
| 15               | Tamil Nadu       | 4                | 4                | 4                | 5                | 5                |
| 16               | Telangana        | 5                | 6                | 6                | 4                | 6                |
| 17               | Uttar Pradesh    | 9                | 7                | 8                | 6                | 8                |
| 18               | Uttarakhand      | 8                | 5                | 5                | 7                | 7                |
| 19               | West Bengal      | 5                | 2                | 3                | 2                | 4                |

Annexure-III

| Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   | Cold Wave Days   |
|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|
| S. No.           | State/UT         | 1971-80          | 1981-90          | 1991-00          | 2001-10          | 2011-19          |
| 1                | J and K          | 4                | 5                | 5                | 6                | 7                |
| 2                | Himachal Pradesh | 6                | 3                | 2                | 3                | 4                |
| 3                | Punjab           | 6                | 6                | 6                | 7                | 3                |
| 4                | Haryana          | 9                | 4                | 3                | 5                | 9                |
| 5                | Uttarakhand      | 7                | 7                | 1                | 1                | 1                |
| 6                | Delhi            | 4                | 3                | 4                | 5                | 4                |
| 7                | UP               | 8                | 3                | 2                | 4                | 6                |
| 8                | Rajasthan        | 11               | 8                | 4                | 5                | 4                |
| 9                | Sikkim           | 1                | 12               | 0                | 1                | 0                |
| 10               | Assam            | 3                | 2                | 0                | 0                | 1                |
| 11               | Madhya Pradesh   | 9                | 5                | 4                | 3                | 5                |
| 12               | West Bengal      | 3                | 1                | 1                | 1                | 2                |
| 13               | Bihar            | 5                | 4                | 3                | 4                | 6                |
| 14               | Gujarat          | 6                | 4                | 2                | 3                | 1                |
| 15               | Jharkhand        | 7                | 2                | 1                | 5                | 4                |
| 16               | Odissa           | 2                | 3                | 1                | 2                | 3                |
| 17               | Tripura          | 5                | 2                | 3                | 1                | 2                |
| 18               | Chattisgarh      | 3                | 5                | 3                | 3                | 6                |
| 19               | Maharashtra      | 7                | 2                | 5                | 3                | 5                |
| 20               | Telangana        | 6                | 2                | 6                | 4                | 6                |
| 21               | Andhra Pradesh   | 3                | 1                | 1                | 7                | 7                |
| 22               | Karnataka        | 1                | 0                | 0                | 0                | 0                |
| 23               | Tamil Nadu       | 2                | 2                | 2                | 2                | 0                |

*****