Compounding disasters of heat, drought likely to add to the crisis

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its March report titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” that so-called compounding disasters of heat and drought events could cause large-scale crop damage and labour productivity losses.

India did not have to wait long to experience the truth of this observation.

A succession of heatwaves over the past three months, occurred simultaneously with a long dry spell over northwest India resulting in power shortage, forest and crop fires, and hit wheat yields.

IPCC said in its report that there is an increasing concurrence of heat and drought events which are causing crop production losses and tree mortality. It added that global warming above 1.5 degree C would

A farmer wears a cap while working in her field in Sangli.

increase risk of simultaneous crop losses of maize in major food-producing regions. Risks to health and food production would be made more severe by the interaction of sudden food production losses from heat and drought, exacerbated by heat-induced labour productivity losses, it said. “These interacting impacts will increase food prices, reduce household incomes, and lead to health risks of malnutrition and climate-related mortality with no or low levels of adaptation, especially in tropical regions,” the IPCC report said.

Following severe heat waves in March and April over northwest India, India banned exports of wheat, abruptly reversing its policy to send shipments around the world to plug a global food shortage.

“The event unfolding now is a perfect example of a compound extreme event that the IPCC has warned of... As global warming continues unabated, we are seeing more of these compound events were multiple extreme events overlap. On the coastal side, heavy rains and storm surges from cyclones are coinciding with sea level rise submerging the coastal regions for prolonged periods... We need to understand and forecast these overlapping and cascading events so as to prepare and adapt for the monstrous extremes of the future that do not in any way look like the extreme weather events from the past,” said Mathew Roxy Koll, climate scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.