India’s Surface Temperature may Increase by 1.1 to 5.1 deg. Celsius by 2100

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Why in the News?
• About the Study
• Major Findings of the Study
• Four Decades of Temperature Rise in India

Why in the News?

• Surface temperatures over India were likely to increase by 1.1 to 5.1 degree Celsius by the year 2100, a new study by IIT-Kharagpur has indicated.

 About the Study

• A study was conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) recently.
• This study, titled ‘Surface Temperature Increase over India during 1980-2020 and Future Projections: Causal Relationships Between Drivers and Trends,’ was published in the journal Nature last month.
• The study was conducted in association with Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.
• It was conducted by investigating the long-term trends of surface temperature in India using surface, satellite and reanalysis data for the period of 1980-2020.
• It also assessed the influence of geophysical drivers on temperature change using the causal discovery.

Major Findings of the Study

• According to the study, India’s surface temperature could surge by 1.1 to 5.1 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
• The study found increasing temperature trend during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons in the northwest, northeast, and northcentral regions of India.
  • The actual rise in temperatures over the Indian region till now has been significantly lower than the global average.
• It attributes the temperature increase to high emissions and states that temperatures might reach a staggering 5.1 degrees Celsius
  • Under moderate emissions scenarios, the average temperature over India as a whole is likely to be about 1.2-2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
  • Under the high emission scenario (emissions increasing by 3 times by 2075), the average temperature is likely to increase by 3.5-5.1 degrees by 2100.
• However, as per the study, the high emission scenarios is unlikely because so many measures are being taken to bring down the emissions. But it can certainly come up to maybe 3 degrees Celsius if the emissions do not come down.

Four Decades of Temperature Rise in India

• The research, conducted over a span of more than two years, outlines that the temperature rise in India over the last 40 years has been evident.
• During the pre-monsoon season, temperatures have increased by 0.1 to 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, while during the post-monsoon season, the increase is more pronounced, ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade.
• Notably, the study also highlights temperature increases in different parts of India during the months of October, November, and December to February over the past four decades.
• The western Himalayan region and north-east India experienced significant temperature rises, further accentuating the urgent need to address rising global temperatures and climate change.

Q1) What is the Greenhouse Effect?

the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere, due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface.

Q2) Is Methane a Greenhouse gas? 

Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities.

Source: IIT-Kharagpur study: India’s surface temperature may increase by 1.1 to 5.1 deg Celsius by 2100 | Nature