Over 90 per cent of the country including Delhi in ‘danger zone’ due to heatwave impact, says study

Over 90 per cent of the country including the national capital is reeling under severe weather conditions due to climate change thus falling under the ‘danger zone’ category of heatwave impacts, according to a study.

The study led by Ramit Debnath and associates at the College of Cambridge, likewise uncovered that Delhi is more vulnerable against serious heatwave impacts, however its new state action plan for environmental change doesn't mirror this.

It suggested that India's progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations has been hindered more significantly than previously thought by heatwaves and that the country's current assessment metrics may not fully reflect the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change.

Heatwaves claimed more than 17,000 lives in 50 years in India, as per a paper prepared by M Rajeevan, former secretary of Ministry of Earth Sciences, alongside researchers Kamaljit Beam, S Beam, R K Giri and A P Dimri.
According to the report that was published in 2021, the nation experienced 706 heatwaves between the years 1971 and 2019.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge compared India's heat index to its climate vulnerability index to determine the country's climate vulnerability and the potential impact of climate change on SDG progress. Taking into account both the temperature and the humidity, the heat index (HI) is a measure of how hot it feels to the human body. To study the impact of heatwaves, the climate vulnerability index (CVI) is a composite index that takes into account biophysical, socioeconomic, and livelihood factors using a variety of indicators.

To classify severity levels, the researchers used a government-provided dataset on state-level climate vulnerability indicators from the National Data and Analytics Platform.

Then, they compared India's progress toward the SDGs over a 20-year period (2001-2021) with deaths caused by extreme weather from 2001-2021.

The review showed that in excess of 90% of India is in the "very careful" or "risk" scope of heatwave influences through Greetings, generally considered "low" or "moderate" weakness through CVI. States that were ranked "low" by the CVI were found to be in "danger" HI categories, indicating that heatwaves put more people in India at risk from extreme weather than the CVI estimated.

The authors suggested that India should reevaluate its climate vulnerabilities in order to meet the SDGs and came to the conclusion that the utilization of CVI may underestimate the actual impact of climate change on heat.

Also read : India set to experience gradual rise in temperature; No heatwave conditions expected