Come the months of November and December, Tamil Nadu is gripped on to weather news. Our frequent experiences with flood, cyclone and heavy rain have made us anxious. Tamil Nadu is experiencing climate change.
IE met with experts from Centre for Climate Change and Disaster Management (CCCDM) at Anna University, namely Professor Dr Kurian Joseph (KJ), Director and Dr A Ramachandran (AR), Emeritus Professor to understand the phenomenon, its impact on the state and methods to handle it. Below are excerpts.
Greenhouse gases
According to Dr A Ramachandran the concentration of greenhouse gases was 274 ppm for several centuries. Now due to enhanced human activities like industrialisation, CO2 emissions and deforestation, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased to 420 ppm. If the current trend continues, the increased concentration of greenhouse gases would lead to rise in earth’s surface temperature, causing unpredictable natural calamities like unprecedented rainfall, drought, cyclone, melting of ice caps, sea level rise, flooding etc. While several countries came together to address the climatic changes at the recent COP – Paris Conference, and decided to limit the earth’s temperature rise to within 1.5 degree Celsius, due to our actions, we expect to end up somewhere at 2.8 degree Celsius.
Cyclones over the Bay
Tamil Nadu has a long coastline. The threat is the uncertainty of cyclone formation in the Bay of Bengal. Scientists from around the world are trying to study the cyclone occurrence pattern but it is still unpredictable. Climate change would trigger super cyclones that can hit at a speed of 140–160 km. We are already experiencing drastic changes in the rainfall pattern with 1200 mm of rain usually expected over a six-month period, now occurring within 60 days. On the other hand, summers are very dry.
Scientists for long have warned about these risks but since economic and industrial development takes precedence, climate concerns have been placed on the back burner. Reducing emissions immediately will not be possible and there is a need to bring people out of poverty. Unless we experience much more severe calamities, such as Covid-19, it will take time for governments to collaborate on issues such as climate change.
Major focus areas of CCCDM
The main focus of the CCCDM is to understand climate change and its impact at local level by climate modelling and to prepare adaptation plans in the areas of water resources, agriculture, forestry, coastal ecosystem and sustainable habitat, said Dr Kurian Joseph.
The primary concern for Tamil Nadu is that we are likely to get increased rainfall but for a short period. The major challenge is how we prepare ourselves to tackle such climate extremities. The solution is to harvest rainwater and identify flood prone areas and to plan, improve, execute flood risk management and adaptive actions.
Agriculture is an important focus area. Climate change will affect agriculture and crops productivity. The third focus is forestry as forests are the major carbon sink. With rampant deforestation, heavy showers lead to soil erosion causing loss of soil fertility and affecting forest growth. Carbon stock estimation and enhancement are critical.
Coastal ecosystems will also be affected. Tamil Nadu has 14 coastal districts. They will face issues like cyclone, sea-level rise and shoreline change.
The next focus area is on cities. There is need of a plan to make the cities climate resilient. Chennai, Coimbatore and Trichy have initiated climate plans to tackle these abnormalities. CCCDM is working towards capacity building at district level in each of these sectors.
Creating models with high precision
A state-of-art Climate Studio was established at CCCDM during 2019 with the financial support of Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit) GIZ, Delhi and Tamil Nadu government. This studio houses a high performance Super computer (200 TB) along with digital learning accessories. The one-of-its-kind lab in the country is equipped with all climate-related modelling and spatial tools to assess the climate risk and vulnerability on different focus areas. The Department of Environment and Climate Change, Government of Tamil Nadu, is currently supporting the operations of the Climate Studio as part of its Climate Change Mission initiatives.
This studio helps to create the Global Climate Model for block level and regional level in Tamil Nadu. Along with this data, we have sector specific software that will help to understand and predict future climate change consequences over the next 100 years. Currently we are working based on the recently released IPCC’s assessment report 6. Based on the IPCC’s report 6, CCCDM findings will be released in January 2023.
Growth has a limit
As a developing nation, we should not follow the consumption-oriented growth of the developed nations. We need to understand that growth has a limit in terms of the available resources and technologies. A report says that we would need three more earths to feed all, at the current rate of consumption in developed countries. It is not practically possible with our finite resources. So, consumption and the impacts of production must get controlled for sustainability.
What Mahatma Gandhi said suits this scenario: ‘There is enough for everyone’s need but not for their greed’. “At CCCDM, our efforts are to support climate resilient sustainable development through research and capacity building,” ended Dr KJ.
