Bhubaneswar: Tell-tale signs of climate change, which have cast a huge shadow on the future of planet Earth, should be taken seriously. Authorities need to draw up an action plan to face the challenge, experts said on Wednesday.
“Increase in the frequency of extreme weather events in recent times has been signaling the seriousness of the situation and the need to do something about it,” Prof Uma Charan Mohanty, Emeritus Professor at the School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences at IIT-Bhubaneswar, said while addressing a seminar at the SOA Deemed to be University.
Prof Mohanty, who was delivering the keynote address at the seminar on the theme “The Sun, The Earth and The Weather,” organised jointly by the Bhubaneswar chapter of Indian Meteorological Society and Centre for Environment and Climate (CEC) of SOA Deemed to be University, said extreme weather events like cyclones, floods, heat waves and droughts had shown an increasing trend between 1980 and 2000, indicating the impact of climate change on environment.
Dr Ajit Tyagi, former Director-General of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), who also addressed the seminar, said heat was on the rise due to anthropogenic reasons “but if it is allowed to rise, we’ll be in trouble.”
Rohit Malhotra, Deputy Director at the Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe), New Delhi and Dr Sarat Chandra Sahu, Director, CEC, also spoke at the seminar.
“Climate change is a huge challenge globally and there is an urgent need to work together. Administrations need to draw up action plans to face this challenge,” Malhotra said.
“Things are going to worsen further with climate change. Every day, the planet is losing biodiversity with certain species getting extinct,” he said.
Malhotra had a discussion with representatives of the Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA) and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) for the preparation of a heat action plan for Bhubaneswar, which has been experiencing extreme heat during the summer.
“Precipitation has also been varying from city to city and it is difficult to interpret what 20cm of rainfall will cause to a city,” he said adding IRADe had so far conducted climate change programmes in six universities.
Universities, he said, should introduce more application-oriented courses for which there was a huge scope.
Prof. Mohanty said that weather and climate systems were complex and this science has no geographical barrier. “The earth’s climate system comprises the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere (ice) and biosphere (vegetation). Human activity during the last 100 years has significantly altered the earth’s climate system,” he said.
Dr Tyagi said the government, research institutes and civil society need to work closely together to meet the challenge of climate change. He complimented SOA Deemed to be University for organising the three-day International Conference on Thunderstorm and Lightning in Tropics (ICTLT) in January in collaboration with OSDMA and four other organisations.
SOA has all the disciplines like engineering, medical science and agriculture, to delve into the issue of climate change, he said adding researchers should now think of how climate change would affect business in the next 15 to 20 years.
Dr Sarat Chandra Sahu, Director of CEC, referred to the conduct of the ICTLT by SOA while pointing out that over 2,500 people died in India due to lightning and thunderstorms annually while Odisha accounted for around 400 deaths.
