Climate Change: Predictions and Models

The United Nations describes climate change as ‘long-term shifts in temperature and weather change’ which can be natural or man-caused.

The United Nations describes climate change as ‘long-term shifts in temperature and weather change’, which can be natural or man-caused. The natural events can be any change in the solar cycle, however, man-caused events like burning of fossil fuels have been the prime factor in the changing climate over the past few decades.

According to an article published in Nature 2007, the attestation for rapid climate change seems profuse. Global temperatures are predicted to rise by up to 4°C by 2100, with associated alterations in precipitation patterns. Therefore, there is an urgent need to address the adverse changes in our climate and come up with a reliable solution.  However, do we really have access to accurate predictions or measurements for the extensive climate change? How reliable are the statistics and data from the ecologists?

Case Study

Earlier this summer, NASA’s ECOSTRESS detected ‘Heat Islands’ on the Indian sub-continent. This heat wave caused dozens of deaths, fires, reduced crops and increased air pollution. NASA’s Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station instrument (ECOSTRESS) measures the temperature of the ground itself to identify plants’ thresholds for water use and water stress, giving insight into their ability to adapt to a warming climate.

ECOSTRESS has been measuring these temperatures from space, at the highest spatial resolution of any satellite instrument. The nighttime temperatures at Delhi were found to be peaking at 39 degree celsius during summers earlier this year. This seems plausible given the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecasted the temperature to reach upto 41.7 degree celsius on April 11, 2022 after India had already recorded its warmest March since 1901.

Researchers say that climate change is playing a key role in this. Studies show that the human activity in Central and Mid-southern India is twice as likely during the 20th century, consequently resulting in severe heat waves. Considering the future climate change scenarios, the risk of severe heat waves could increase ten folds. 

Reliable Solution Models?

To tackle the problem of an increasingly affected population, the Health Ministry issued an advisory to all employers in April mandating them to install temporary shelters and limit hours for new workers. Citizens of Delhi were urged to stay indoors from noon to 3 p.m. and were advised to stay hydrated and educate themselves about the symptoms of heat stress. The country’s hospitals were commanded to review and restock the intravenous drips, ice packs and oral rehydration salts in cases of emergencies.

Many of the country’s states also introduced changes to a vast government program known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which offers minimum-wage jobs to more than 50 million households every year to compensate for any loss due to reduced working hours. However, since the issue of climate change is vast, the solutions also need to be expansive. Due to the extreme heat waves, the country struggled with dozens of deaths and lack of employees which brought the country to a stand still in the beginning of the financial year. 

The youth of the country are coming up with collaborative ideas using Artificial intelligence to help certain communities better understand the dangers of heat waves. Since 2017, SEEDS, a New Delhi-based disaster response and preparedness non-profit organisation has been working with communities highly susceptible to heat waves and helping them come up with solutions to beat the heat.

Furthermore, with the support of Microsoft’s AI for Humanitarian Action grant, SEEDS was able to develop an AI model to predict the impact of climate hazards like cyclones, earthquakes or heat waves in any given area. The model named Sunny Lives successfully generated the heat wave risk information for around 125,000 people living in slums in New Delhi, India’s capital along with Nagpur, a central Indian city vulnerable to intense heat waves.

The IMD also upgraded the conventional radars in the observational network with Doppler radars using digital technology. The department has proposed to procure and implement 30 Doppler Weather Radars (DWRs) in the second phase of the Modernization plan of IMD at various locations throughout India. The existing Doppler weather radars have also been upgraded and are now networked to provide data for numerical weather prediction models for nowcasting. 

As of now we can infer that the upcoming models and solutions for climate change from the government do look promising unlike before. However, it will stand in trial during the upcoming winters which are predicted to be extremely harsh due to the inflation impacting the whole world.