Shillong, April 20: According to a recent study, over 90% of India’s entire area is in the “extremely cautious” or “danger zone” of experiencing heatwaves, which are occurring more frequently as a result of climate change.
Ramit Debnath and colleagues at the University of Cambridge conducted a study that found Delhi to be especially susceptible to the effects of extreme heatwaves.
According to the paper, heatwaves are hindering India’s efforts more than previously believed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, and current assessment metrics do not properly account for the effects of heatwaves on the nation.
According to the paper, intense heat could ultimately result in a 15% decrease in “outdoor working capacity,” a reduction in up to 480 million people’s quality of life, and a cost of 2.8 percent of GDP by 2050.
Furthermore, since 1992, heatwaves have contributed to more than 24,000 fatalities, increased air pollution, and hastened the melting of glaciers in northern India. A recent award ceremony in Maharashtra saw fourteen people pass away from sunstroke, making it the nation’s greatest recorded death toll from a single heatwave-related incident.
According to the paper, India is currently “facing a collision of multiple, cumulative climate hazards” and extreme weather was experienced nearly every day from January to October of last year.
The heat index and climate vulnerability index of the nation were analytically evaluated by the researchers.
The heat index (HI), which considers both temperature and humidity, is a gauge of how hot it feels to the human body. In order to examine the effects of heatwaves, the climatic vulnerability index (CVI) is a composite index that incorporates a number of indicators to take socioeconomic, livelihood, and biophysical elements into consideration.
The study identifies key factors in Delhi that will exacerbate heat-related vulnerabilities, including the concentration of slum dwellers and overcrowding in high HI areas, lack of access to basic services like electricity, water, and sanitation, lack of immediate access to healthcare and health insurance, poor housing conditions, and unclean cooking fuel (biomass, kerosene, and coal).
The authors came to the conclusion that the use of CVI may significantly understate the true impact of climate change on heat and recommended that India reevaluate its climate vulnerabilities in order to achieve the SDGs.
Researchers cautioned that if India does not address the effects of heatwaves right once, progress towards reaching sustainable development goals may be slowed.