India will witness increased heat waves and flooding: Report

Police and rescue personnel evacuate local residents from a house flooded after cyclone Tauktae, in Kochi. File pic/AFP

The Indian Ocean is warming at a higher rate than other oceans, a report on climate change stated on Monday, with scientists warning that India will witness increased heat waves and flooding, which will be the irreversible effects of climate change.

The authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report, "Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis", said the warming of the ocean will lead to a rise in sea levels, which will contribute to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-level areas.

"For a country like India, some of the increase in heat waves is masked by aerosol emissions and reducing that is important for air quality. We will also see an increase in the heat waves, heavy rainfall events and the further melting of glaciers, leading to rise in sea level, which could mean flooding when tropical cyclones hit. These are some of the impacts which will not go away," said Friederike Otto, one of the authors of the report.

Another author, Swapna Panickal, who is a scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said about 50 per cent of the sea level rise is due to thermal expansion. "The Indian Ocean region is warming at a higher rate, which means the relative sea level can also increase over the regions. Hence, the coastal regions will see the sea level rise through the 21st century and it will contribute to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-level areas and coastal erosion."

The report also observed that it is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change, making extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall and drou-ghts, more frequent and severe.

In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, world leaders had agreed to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above levels in the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The world has already warmed nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius in the past century and a half. Under each scenario, the report said, the world will cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows.

While calling the report "a code red for humanity," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres kept a sliver of hope that world leaders could still somehow prevent 1.5 degrees of warming, which he said is "perilously close." "It's just guaranteed that it's going to get worse," said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist. "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

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