Rising temperatures are going to hit India hard and by the end of the century the mean temperature rise is expected to be between 3.5 and 4.3 degrees Celsius. This is bound to have a deleterious effect on wheat production and will also see a major increase in cases of malaria.
These are but a few of the alarming submissions made in India’s National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) covering a wide variety of sectors including water, agriculture, forestry, natural ecosystems, coastal regions and human health between 1961-2098 by using computer-generated models in which over 2,000 scientists provided inputs.
The report has analysed a variety of parameters including rainfall, surface air temperature and mean sea-level pressure to project a rise of temperature which could go up to almost five degrees Celsius.
The report highlighted that a one degree C increase in temperature will not cause any significant loss in wheat production since farmers could use adaptation strategies to minimise their losses.
But a five degree C temperature will result in losing a quarter of the wheat production by the current standards. Such a sharp temperature rise will lead to the loss of 27.5 million tonnes of wheat annually. India’s current wheat production for the year 2011-12 was 88.31 million tonnes.
In fact, the entire food production cycle of short season crops such as vegetable and fruits will also be adversely affected.
Another cause for concern will be the effect this will have on water resources and on power generation. Rising temperature will adversely affect health and northern states are expected to witness an upswing in malaria cases as also some of the southern states, especially Karnataka.
Forests will also be adversely affected especially in the upper Himalayan regions.