The subcontinent is one of the most vulnerable world regions to warming. According to a study by the Center for Science and the Environment, out of the first 273 days of the year, 241 were marked by an extreme climate event.
by Sophie Landrin (New Delhi, correspondent)
Thunderstorms, torrential rains, landslides, floods, cold waves, heat waves, cyclones, droughts, dust, hail or snow storms: India has known on the first nine months of 2022 almost a meteorological phenomenon Extreme every day, according to the Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), based in New Delhi.
By collecting data from the Indian Meteorological Department and the Division of Disaster Management of the Ministry of the Interior, the study reveals that over the 273 days between the 1 er January and January and January and January and January and January and January and January and January and January On September 30, 241 days, or 88 % of the time, were marked by an extreme climate event, defined by IPCC experts as a “rare in a place and a given period”. “Under the effect of climate change, the extreme events that occurred once every a hundred years have started to occur every five years,” concludes the CSE.
These data will weigh heavy for India in the debate on losses and damage which has opened up to COP27, even if the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, chose not to move to Charm el-Cheikh, in Egypt.
hundreds of deaths
The state of Madhya Pradesh, in the center of India, is the most affected in terms of frequency with an episode every two days, but it is the state of the Himachal Pradesh, in Himalayas , which counted the greatest number of victims with 359 dead, followed by Assam, where the catastrophic monsoon resulted in 301 deaths in June.
The economic and human assessment is important but underestimated, according to the authors, because of plot data: 2,755 victims in total, 1.8 million hectares of affected crops, 416,667 destroyed houses and 69 007 heads lived cattle.
From the beginning of 2022, two exceptional events had relayed themselves: one month of January of the wet, with levels of higher precipitation of 129 % on average, and a driest month of March And the hottest for over 121 years. The whole north and east of India were overwhelmed by an early, intense and long heat wave. Mars, which is usually a temperate month at the end of winter in northern India, turned into a furnace. The trend continued in April and May. A record temperature peak of almost 49 ° C was recorded in certain districts of New Delhi.
Already 203 days of heat wave in 2022
By adding the number of heat waves reported in each State, the Ministry of Earth Sciences had revealed in July before the Parliament that India recorded, through its vast territory, 203 days of heat wave in 2022, Five times more than in 2021 (36 episodes). The absolute record was recorded in the state of Uttarakhand, in the Himalayas, with 28 days of heat wave.
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