Vibha Sharma
New Delhi, November 1
In just nine months in 2022, India witnessed some form of natural disaster almost every day, according to CSE’s new report on extreme weather—India 2022: An Assessment of Extreme Weather Events.
According to the Centre for Science and Environment, India recorded extreme weather events on 242 of the 273 days between January 1 and September 30, 2022. This means that more than 88 per cent of the time over these nine months, the country was witnessing an extreme weather event of some sort happening in one or more of its regions, stated the new assessment.
“What the country has witnessed so far in 2022 is the new abnormal in a warming world. There is a clear spike in frequency and intensity of extreme events that we are seeing,” CSE director general Sunita Narain said.
The report provides season-wise, month-wise and region-wise analysis of extreme weather events and their associated loss and damage. “India witnessed a disaster almost every day for nine months of this year from heat and cold waves, cyclones and lightning to heavy rains, floods and landslides. Loss and damage was under-estimated,” it said.
“These disasters have claimed 2,755 lives, affected 1.8 million hectares of crop area, destroyed over 416,667 houses and killed close to 70,000 livestock. This estimation of loss and damage is probably an underestimate as data for each event, including losses of public property or crop loss, has not been collated or estimated,” said Rajit Sengupta one of the writers.
According to the report, with an event every second day, Madhya Pradesh saw the highest number of days with extreme weather events, but Himachal Pradesh saw the highest number of human fatalities—359 deaths.
Madhya Pradesh and Assam witnessed 301 human deaths each.
Assam reported the highest number of damaged houses and animal deaths.
Karnataka, which experienced an extreme weather event on 82 days, accounted for more than 50 percent of the crop area affected in the country.
Central and north-western regions reported the highest number of days with extreme weather events at 198 and 195, respectively.
In terms of human lives lost, central India topped the list with 887 deaths, followed by the east and northeast (783 deaths).
In 2022, India recorded seventh wettest January since 1901 with March also being the warmest ever and the third driest in 121 years.
It also saw the third warmest April, 11th warmest August and eight warmest September since 1901.
Eastern and northeastern India saw its warmest and driest July in 121 years. The region also recorded its second warmest August and fourth warmest September in 2022.
In terms of the ‘nature’ of the event, all types of extreme weather were seen in the past nine months ndash; lightning and storms were spread over 30 states and claimed 773 lives.
Every day of the three months of monsoon ndash; from June to August ndash; indicate heavy to very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall in some parts of the country. This is why the flood devastation has not spared any region ndash; in Assam, for instance, vast parts of the state were submerged leading to loss of lives, property and livelihoods.
Heat waves claimed 45 lives, but what is not captured in the official data is the impact of the prolonged high temperatures on people’s well-being in north.
“The good news is that fatalities because of cyclones were few ndash; only two lives were lost according to available data from cyclones that destroyed 95,066 hectare in the country.
“This is because of the amazing work done by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on cyclone forecasting so that there is adequate warning to governments. It is also because state governments, particularly those in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, have improved their systems of disaster management,” said Narain.
