Climate Change In South Asia

Currently Climate Change is one of the most ignored, overlooked and ongoing manmade disaster. Climate change is no longer an issue for the distant future. It is already taking place in South Asian countries particularly the poorest people, are most at the risk. The impact of high temperature, more variable precipitation, more extreme weather events and sea level rise in South Asia will continue to intensify. These changes have major impacts on economic performances on South Asian countries. These impacts will exacerbate existing social and environmental problems leads to migration within and across the national borders. The high rates of population growth, and natural resource degradation, with continuing high rates of poverty and food insecurity

period from 1956 to 2005 than over the entire 100 year period i.e., 0.13°C ± 0.03°C vs. 0.07°C ± 0.02°C per decade (IPCC 2007). Eleven of the 12 year period between 1995 and 2006 are among the 12 warmest years since the instrumental record of global surface temperature was started in 1850 (IPCC 2007). The following information on the observed climate change in South Asia was summarized from the report of the Working Group II chapter on Asia (Chapter 10 – Cruz et al. 2007) of IPCC. Decreasing trends in annual mean rainfall have been observed in the coastal belts and arid plains of Pakistan and parts of North-East India with increasing trends in Bangladesh. In general, the frequency of more intense rainfall events in many parts of Asia has increased, causing severe floods, landslides, and debris/mud flows. It is interesting that at the same time, the number of rainy days and total annual amount of precipitation has decreased. An example of this can be demonstrated by the extreme rainfall event which occurred in Mumbai, India on 26 and 27 July 2005. In a matter of 18 h, 944 mm of rain was recorded which was the highest rainfall ever recorded in the last 100 years in India. Mumbai and adjacent areas of Maharashtra experienced one of their worst floods in history (Government of Maharashtra 2005). In many parts of South Asia, there have been an increasing frequency and intensity of droughts. The linear trends of rainfall decreases for 1900–2005 were 7.5% in South Asia (significant at <1%). Droughts have become more common, especially in the tropics and subtropics, since the 1970s (IPCC 2007). Also, there has been a noted decrease in the number of cyclones originating from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea since 1970 but the intensity of these storms has