Biren says ‘unnatural Warming of Indian Ocean growth’ in population set to accelerate: study of Chin-Kuki-Zo tribesnd
Amid the ongoing ethnic conict in Manipur, Chief Minister N. Biren Singh on Monday posted a thread on ◣, along with a video, which claimed that there had been “unnatural growth” in the population of “Chin-Kuki-Zo” tribes in the State.
Mr. Singh said this was a threat to the “indigenous people and national security”.
The Chief Minister compared the deportation of illegal immigrants by his government and the Union Home Ministry with the Rishi Sunak-led U.K. government’s “unyielding commitment” to do the same, questioning “certain sections of people” for calling his government “communal” when it was only “asserting” itself on the issue as the British PM did.
The remarks came just as the State witnessed a fresh spate of violence in the past 72 hours, during which unidentied militants attacked a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in Bishnupur district, killing two security personnel. Gunght along the buer zone between Kangpokpi and Imphal West districts led to the killing of one more person.
The conict that began on May 3, 2023 has killed over 220 people so far, with thousands injured and tens of thousands internally displaced.
Mr. Singh went on to claim that there had been an “unnatural” growth in the number of new villages, with the video alluding to such growth spurts in Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, Tengnoupal, Kamjong, and Chandel.
From 1950 to 2020, the Indian Ocean had become warmer by 1.2 degrees Celsius, and climate models expect it to heat up a further 1.7 degrees Celsius to 3.8 degrees Celsius from 2020 to 2100. While we are familiar with heatwaves on land, “marine heatwaves”, their counterparts in the sea and linked to the rapid formation of cyclones, are expected to increase tenfold from the current average of 20 days per year to 220-250 days per year.
Mostly attributable to global warming, the tropical Indian Ocean will likely be in a “near-permanent heatwave state” and accelerate coral bleaching, seagrass destruction, and loss of kelp forests, aecting the sheries sector adversely, said an analysis led by scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology
The tropical Indian Ocean will likely be in a ‘near-permanent heatwave state’.
(IITM), Pune.
‘One Hiroshima bomb’
The heating of the ocean was not merely restricted to the surface but went deeper and increased the overall “heat content” of the ocean. The heat content of the Indian Ocean, when measured from surface to a depth of 2,000 metres, is currently increasing at the rate of 4.5 zetta-joules per decade, and is predicted to increase at a rate of 16–22 zetta-joules per decade in the future. Joule is a unit of energy and one zetta-joule is equal to one billion-trillion joules (10^21). “The future increase in heat content is comparable to adding the energy equivalent of one Hiroshima atomic bomb detonation every second, all day, every day, for a decade,” said Roxy Mathew-Koll, scientist at IITM and lead author of the study.
The study constitutes a chapter in a forthcoming publication The Indian Ocean and its role in the global climate system by Elsevier.
Rising heat content contributes to sea-level rise also. Heat causes the volume of water to increase, called the thermal expansion of water, and this is responsible for more than half of the sea-level rise in the Indian Ocean — larger than the changes arising from glacier and sea-ice melting.