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India is underestimating heatwave impact, warns Cambridge Study

Heatwaves, an extreme weather event in India, are getting intense, lethal, and recurrent due to climate change. These are now influencing the nation’s economic and development goals in addition to the health of its citizens. Additionally, the nation’s initiatives to combat poverty and inequality are being hampered by the increasing number of heatwave episodes. The government has issued multiple advisories and implemented measures like closing schools, etc., to protect the general populace from severe heat waves but this does not seem to be enough.

The effects of the intense heat on India’s economy, public health, and agriculture have recently been made public by a new study. This report, published by a team of academics led by Ramit Debnath from the University of Cambridge, warned about the effects of the heatwave on the expanding Indian economy.

According to the study, which assesses the effects of all such actions, the country’s legislators grossly underestimate the effects of heat waves. The study also pointed out that the estimate by the Indian government that only 20 per cent of the country is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change is much lower than the reality and more than 90 per cent of the country is at risk. The study also highlights that India’s scorching heat is responsible for causing fatalities, illnesses, crop losses, and school closures, hindering the country’s progress. 

Studies continue to demonstrate that exposure to high temperatures has a negative impact on learning, academic performance, and cognitive function. Better performance on standardized tests and evaluations of cumulative learning outcomes were linked to lower classroom temperatures and increased thermal comfort.

Health Impacts

The health impact of a heatwave depends on:

  • The intensity and duration of the high-temperature period
  • the acclimatization and adaptation of the population
  • the infrastructure and preparedness to address heat extremes. 

Due to the body’s inability to regulate high temperatures, exposure to heat can produce severe symptoms, including heat exhaustion and heat stroke, which can lead to fainting and dry, heated skin. Other signs and symptoms include weakness, heat rash on the neck, cramping, headache, irritation, and swelling in the lower limbs. Heat can result in acute cerebrovascular accidents, severe dehydration, and thrombogenesis (blood clots). A heat wave increases the risk of complications and death for elderly persons, children, and those with chronic conditions who use daily prescriptions.

Impact on Agriculture

Heat waves are a major threat to agriculture regarding crop production and livestock health. Agricultural production may be significantly impacted by heat waves. They are capable of ruining crops, lowering output, and killing livestock. In addition to increasing water use, heat waves can put pressure on water supplies. Dr M Rajeevan, former secretary, the Ministry of Earth Sciences told CFC India, “Heatwaves in Northwest India pose a threat to the wheat crop. The Indian Meteorological Department uses various models to predict these heat waves which helps in generating early warning and minimizing crop failures”. 

How are heat waves weakening SDG progress across India?

India currently uses a national Climate Vulnerability Indicator (CVI) to measure climate vulnerability and make plans for adaptation.

It is essential to consider the social, cultural, economic, and structural development elements of society and environmental vulnerabilities for constructing CVIs. For instance, SDG-3 (Good health and well-being) and SDG-15 (Life on land), both of which are affected in Andhra Pradesh, are under grave threat in terms of Heat Index (HI). However, according to the CVI classification, vulnerability to these SDGs is viewed as modest. Similarly, the SDGs that are most important and will be negatively impacted for West Bengal are SDG-3 (Good health and well-being), SDG-5 (Gender equality), SDG-8 (Decent work and economic progress), and SDG-15 (Life on land) because they are all in the same serious danger in Heat Index category. However, if one considers only the CVI, these SDGs are not found to be at high risk.

The HI index shows that the ‘danger’ HI range covers over 80% of Indian states, whereas many Indian states are classified as moderate or low in the CVI ranking. Source: SDG Index Score

Expert’s Opinion

Dr Partha Das, Climate scientist and in-house expert of CFC India said, “One important observation made in the Cambridge University research paper is the fact that the methodologies used for assessing vulnerability in India for national reporting have not considered ‘heat extremes’ as a source of high climatic vulnerability. Some assessments have taken note of heat waves as a potential climate risk but have not dealt with this issue adequately. The authors of this research have shown how the state-level scenarios of vulnerability can change when one includes the Heat Indices (HI) in the existing climate vulnerability indices (CVI). Therefore, it warrants a careful review of the current methods of estimating climate vulnerability and risk being used by Indian government agencies and the country’s scientists in general. Emerging threats to public health and development, such as extreme climate events (like heat and cold extremes), forest fire, lightning, urban poverty, air pollution, loss of biological diversity, zoonotic diseases, physical and psychological well-being, etc., need to be incorporated in evaluating vulnerability.”

He also added, “Two important reports brought out by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India in the recent past on vulnerability assessment of the Indian Himalayan Region and for all the states of the country, respectively, have demonstrated a standard approach to assessing climate vulnerability at the state and district level in India. A single framework was used so that there is comparability between the state of vulnerability and convergence in conclusions made from the exercise. However, the uniformity in the application of assessment tools comes at the cost of loss of local specificity concerning physical, environmental, social, and cultural factors that vary highly and affect vulnerability remarkably as a complicated nexus across the country. The Cambridge University research provides us with an occasion to rethink vulnerability and ensure that ‘all important factors that affect vulnerability, including the place-based nuances, are adequately captured in the assessments.”

“Moreover, although heat extremes have become a mesoscale phenomenon in India, affecting large swaths of rural and urban landscapes, the detrimental effects are often seen more in urban areas than in suburban and village areas. Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are an interesting phenomenon that causes the temperatures over cities to rise, making the cityscape warmer than its surrounding rural landscape. Thus, heat wave conditions over dense city pockets can become more dangerous due to additional heating generated by the UHIs. The add-on temperatures may range from 2 degrees to 9 degrees Celsius in the case of Indian cities, as found in a recent study. The UHIs themselves are capable of modifying local climate by affecting temperature, humidity, and rainfall. Further, the impact of climate change on the UHI makes the urban climatic and weather anomalies more uncertain and harmful to vulnerable sections of the populace like the elderly, children, and people with morbidity. As if it was not enough, the air pollutants from construction, industries, vehicles, and electronic equipment, especially those that act as greenhouse gasses, also add more heat to the stagnating warm air masses to linger over urban spaces making the overall thermal environment even more life-threatening to the people,” he added.

“The heat extremes, besides having harmful and fatal effects on human health, also impact other organisms, pets, wild animals, and birds. The heat hazards compel people to spend more money on buying cooling equipment like air conditioners, coolers, refrigerators, and cold beverages and retrofitting home and office spaces to reduce the warming effects. This results in higher consumption of electricity, occasionally leading to power cuts because of higher pressure on power grids and more inconvenience to people. The poor and marginalized people are the worst sufferers of such nested hazards. We need local plans to mitigate the impact and risk of heat waves guided by national and state-level policies. But have our national and state-level action plans on climate change given enough attention to the heat-induced disasters and mitigation strategies required to shield the people from its killer effects? The answer is not encouraging,” said Dr Das. 

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References: 

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