Experts blame climate change, unplanned development for floods in UP, Bihar

As heavy rains pound several states across India throwing life out of gear, environment experts have blamed climate change and rising global temperature for an erratic rainfall pattern which has claimed over 100 lives.

While some experts stress on reducing carbon footprint, some feel it is not a natural phenomenon but a result of unplanned construction.

Several parts of India are currently facing severe flooding as a result of unusually heavy monsoon rain, with the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar particularly affected.

Nearly 110 people have died in the last five days. While 79 people have died in UP, 28 lives have been lost in Bihar.

Tarun Gopalakrishnan, climate policy researcher at the Centre for Science and Environment, said there was a need to reduce carbon emissions as climate change was resulting in erratic rains.

"Climate change is resulting in more erratic rainfall patterns, including a large portion of seasonal rainfall being concentrated in a limited number of days, leading to flooding. Limiting the human cost of this trend will require drastically cutting carbon emissions around the globe, while investing in adaptation for the new climate reality," he said.

Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believe that the rise in global and local temperatures have contributed to the observed anomalies in rainfall.

"Parts of Bihar and the Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand belt already exhibit a rising trend in terms of the number of heavy rainfall events. Though we cannot pinpoint each event to climate change unless we do in-depth attribution study, it is likely that the rise in global and local temperatures have contributed to observed anomalies in rainfall," said Roxy Mathew Koll, Co-Author of IPCC's special report on oceans and cryosphere.

"Specifically, widespread heavy rains resulting in floods are on a rise across the central and west coast, and parts of north/north-east India," he said