Horror of hotter world hits home *Extreme conditions predicted for India The Telegrgaph G.S. MUDUR
New Delhi, Feb. 12: For India, global warming might mean a change to extreme weather. Computer simulations have predicted rising minimum and maximum temperatures across India, more cyclones over the Bay of Bengal, and a higher frequency of extreme rainfall events. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune, who used weather prediction models to study how climate change might impact India, have found that there might be substantial regional differences in changes in the rainfall. Several studies in recent years have shown that the earth is warming up because of an increase in atmospheric levels of the so-called greenhouse gases, such as the carbon dioxide produced during the combustion of fossil fuels. These gases trap heat from the sun and increase average global temperatures. The IITM study was part of an effort to predict how global warming might affect the Indian subcontinent. In a research report published in the journal Current Science on Friday, the scientists said a climate modelling system developed by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in the UK, when applied to India, predicted an overall warming from the year 2070 to 2100. The increase in temperature ranged from 2.5 degrees Celsius to 5 degrees Celsius, with the highest increase in the northern parts of the country. "The simulation shows that global warming will lead to more frequent atmospheric systems that produce extreme temperature and extreme rainfall events," said K. Rupa Kumar, head of climatology at the IITM. The model predicted a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme rainfall over a large area, particularly along the west coast and west central India. Maximum and minimum temperatures are also likely to increase in the future, the scientists said. "There is already evidence from the past few decades that minimum temperatures are increasing more rapidly than the maximum temperatures," Kumar said. The simulation examined two scenarios - one in which carbon dioxide emissions continue, and the other in which society takes steps to reduce emissions. The simulations have shown that if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise steadily, the Bay of Bengal will experience more frequent cyclones during the post-monsoon months of October and November from 2040 to 2060. "This prediction fits in with recent observed trends that point to an intensification of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal," said A. Sankaran Unnikrishnan, an oceanographer at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Goa. Tide gauge observations along the coasts have revealed a sea-level rise of slightly less than one millimetre per year at Mumbai, Kochi and Visakhapatnam, an IITM-NIO research team said in the same issue of Current Science.