The study notes that one-day monsoon rains will continue to become more intense, risking even more deadly landslides, until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. Photo: X@pinarayivijayan
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday said the root cause of the Wayanad landslide disaster is climate change.
“The root cause of the Wayanad disaster is climate change. The agriculture sector is one of the most directly affected by this phenomenon. At this stage, our main focus should be to discuss the impact of climate change on agriculture and the measures required to overcome these challenges,” Vijayan said after inaugurating the Farmers’ Day celebrations here.
He said experts estimate that due to climate change, rain-fed rice yields in our country could decline by 20% by 2050 and by 47% by 2080.
“Similarly, wheat yields could decline by 19.3% by 2050 and 40% by 2080. These are serious concerns that require immediate and sustained attention,” he added.
The landslides that killed hundreds of people in Wayanad, Kerala, were triggered by a burst of rain that became about 10 percent more intense due to man-made climate change, according to a study.
The study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international group of researchers, concluded that the excessive rainfall in the early hours of July 30 that triggered the landslides was a “once-in-50-years event.”
The study highlights the need for rigorous landslide risk assessments and improved early warning in the hilly regions of northern Kerala to prevent recurrence of landslide disasters.
The study was conducted by 24 researchers as part of the World Weather Attribution group, including scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in India, Malaysia, the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
“Available climate models indicate a 10% increase in intensity. Under a future warming scenario in which global temperature is two degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, climate models predict even stronger one-day rainfall events, with an expected further increase of about 4% in rainfall intensity,” the study notes.
The study noted that one-day bursts of monsoon rain will continue to become more intense, risking even more deadly landslides, until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
“Minimising deforestation and quarrying, while improving early warning and evacuation systems, will help protect the people of northern Kerala from future landslides and floods,” the study suggests.
The study highlights that single-day heavy rainfall events in Kerala are becoming more frequent, a change attributed to climate change. They were once rare but are now expected to occur about once every 50 years due to global warming of 1.3°C.
The research also points to factors such as quarrying of construction materials and a 62 per cent decline in forest cover in Wayanad between 1950 and 2018, which have increased the area’s vulnerability to landslides during heavy rains.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: August 17, 2024 | 11:26 PM IS
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