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

The actual rise in temperatures over the Indian region till now has been significantly lower than the global average. “The Earth’s surface temperatures have increased significantly since the beginning of industrialisation. The high emissions of greenhouse gases have contributed to global warming and climate change, which is expected to continue. We have investigated the long-term trends of surface temperature in India using surface, satellite and reanalysis data for the period of 1980–2020, and assessed the influence of geophysical drivers on temperature change using the causal discovery,” the research by the Centre for Ocean, River, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL) at IIT Kharagpur says.

The study, titled “Enhanced surface temperature over India during 1980–2020 and future projections: Causal links of the drivers and trends”, found increasing temperature trend during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons in the northwest, northeast, and north-central regions of India.

“Analyses with the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) results show that temperature can increase up to 1.1–5.1°C by the year 2100 under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP5)–8.5 scenario. The increasing trend of temperature in India is a big concern, which calls for adaption and mitigation measures to alleviate adverse effects of accelerated warming and regional climate change,” it said.

The study was conducted in association with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune which provided meteorological data based on which the research paper was made.

“We have looked into the surface temperature in India in the last forty years and then made projections for the same till 2100. We have used a lot of data, especially from the Indian Meteorological Department which was provided by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. We have also used global data. We have made projections for different scenarios,” lead researcher and associate professor at IIT-Kharagpur’s CORAL, Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath told The Indian Express.

“Under moderate emissions scenarios, the average surface temperature over India as a whole is likely to be about 1.2-2°C by 2100. These are the intermediate greenhouse gas emissions at current levels. Under the high emission scenario (emissions increasing by 3 times by 2075), the average temperature is likely to increase by 3.5-5.1°C by 2100. These numbers agree with the global average and the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) evaluation. However, the high emission scenario could be unlikely because so many measures are being taken to bring down the emissions. But it can come up to maybe 3°C, if the emissions do not come down,” the professor elaborated.

 

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The IIT-Kharagpur professor along with his three PhD students and a scientist from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune worked on the study. It took them more than two years to arrive at these projections.

The study also said that temperature increases in the last four decades in the country have ranged from 0.1 to 0.3°C per decade during pre-monsoon and 0.2-0.4°C per decade during post-monsoon.

According to the study, post-monsoon season displayed increasing temperature trends across the entire country, with the most significant values in the western Himalayan region (0.2-0.5°C per decade) and northeast India (0.1-0.4°C per decade).

It further said that the average surface temperatures over north-west India, the west coast of India and peninsular India have increased by about 0.01 to 0.03°C per year in the last four decades during the October and November period. During the December-February period in the past four decades, parts of extreme north India, extreme north-west India, the temperatures in west coast of India and south peninsular India have increased by about 0.01 to 0.02°C per year.