Surface warming and climate risk

Reducing vulnerability and restoring infrastructure remain challenges

Recent weather events in the United States — hurricanes Harvey and Irma — affecting Texas through the southern states — and in the Indian sub-continent deluging northern Bihar, Bangladesh and Nepal have, once again, brought under the lens the matter of ocean warming and climate change. Harvey’s intensification occurred after travelling over unusually warmer ocean temperatures (2 degree C) in the Gulf of Mexico, before landfall. The sea surface warming in the Gulf has occurred over a century and is continuing. The Arctic Report Card also describes how sea surface temperature (SST) is increasing in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. Seas of Alaska and Greenland have the largest warming trends — 1/2 degree C per decade since 1982. Instances can be drawn from other seas and continents including Antarctica where a chunk as large as the US has broken off and is floating. 

Though the UN-established Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated that they have not found a definitive link, nevertheless a large portion of the scientific community has postulated the existence of a link between climate change and a greater number of major hurricanes as a percentage of total tropical cyclones in a season. Earth cannot get away from the self-harm it is inflicting. US President Donald Trump’s 2017 abrogation of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change — a global commitment to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C and to allocate adequate financial resources to achieve it — cannot be assessed in any other light. 

Given the harsh reality, however, it is every country’s responsibility to minimise its own climate risk brought on by worsening natural disasters. The 2017 Global Climate Risk Index published by Germanwatch, Bonn, in “Who suffers most in extreme weather events?”, has revealed how vulnerable India is, ranking as high as fourth in climate risk among 182 nations. Table 1 shows that, in 2015, only Mozambique, Dominica and Malawi were affected more than India. Even Vanuatu, Myanmar, Bahamas, Ghana and Madagascar in the top 10 were less affected (not in Table). 

Germanwatch elaborated that, in 2015, India’s damage was upwards of $40 billion in purchasing power parity, with higher than 4,300 dead. Unseasonal rainfall caused floods in February and March, a deadly heat wave took 2,300 lives, and floods in August and December caused enormous damage. The situation continues for, as per the UNICEF, the 2017 deluge in the northern Indian subcontinent cost 1,288 lives, with 40 million people (16 million children) being affected. India’s death count was variously estimated around 800. Hurricane Harvey cost the US 60 lives and the Irma cost Cuba 10. 

What is revealing is that the pattern of climate change disasters is also changing. Thus, print media reported that flood-prone districts in Bihar were no longer the only ones to be affected this year. Further, the intensity of rains increased even where total rainfall remained the same. Thus unexpected flash floods – rather than just embankment breaches – have increased. Hence preparations were not adequately targeted. All this cries out for more resources to achieve correct forecasting, preparations and infrastructural care, the kind usually accomplished in the US. 

Illustration by Binay Sinha

Shunondo Basu, meteorologist at Bloomberg New Energy Finance based in New York, elaborated on Bloomberg TV the relentless lashing by Harvey and its immediate deleterious impact on the US’s energy sector. He focussed on Harvey’s impact on US energy markets. Production of gasoline, petrochemicals, and other refined products declined severely during the days of the storm and immediately thereafter. Refinery shutdowns and disruptions to pipeline infrastructure caused a sudden supply constraint. Gasoline prices rose nationwide. The impact on pipelines tightened even the market in Northeastern US. The Texas power grid, ERCOT, saw total load down by as much as 40 per cent. Given that natural gas is the primary fuel source for power generation, demand for this commodity was down significantly. Crude oil tankers drifted on the Gulf, unable to deliver at ports. Natural gas exports to Mexico were also interrupted as force majeure was declared on a number of pipelines.

In subsequent bulletins, Mr Basu elaborated on selected aspects of industry recovery. Despite being hit by the storm, shale oil production resumed fairly quickly, with a return to near-normal operations by end of August. A number of ship channels that had been flooded out became accessible by September beginning. No doubt, in the US, normalcy appears to be restored relatively quickly, buttressed by government financial support. By contrast, as a post-climate event period unfolds, it typically takes long for infrastructure to be reinstated methodically in India’s environment. To no small extent it appears to reflect leakage of relief funds, a matter India has found tough to grapple with. 

India’s lack of mitigation, and absent or slow rehabilitation, are tough to reliably measure in toto. Even here, the brunt of the weighing down of corruption is on the silent, helpless, rural denizen. Without frontal and full throttle confrontation on corruption, India will remain unable to pick up and move forward in economic, leave alone social, terms, when natural disasters precipitated by the increasingly complex ramifications of climate change hit India’s expanse.