Editorial: Spring breakers

Last week, India improved its Climate Risk Index (CRI) rank from the seventh worst affected country globally in 2019 to 49th in 2022. The ranking based on the impact of extreme weather, however, places India among the top 10 most affected nations historically. In the context of long term assessment (1993-2022), India emerged as the sixth worst affected as the country experienced devastating floods in 1993, 1998, and 2013, along with severe heat waves in 2002, 2003, and 2015. The findings were part of the CRI 2025 report which was released by the environmental think tank Germanwatch. It analysed six indicators including fatalities and economic loss due to extreme weather events reported in the nations during the aforementioned period.

The metrics pertaining to India are worrying, as extreme weather events claimed over 80,000 lives, incurring the nation financial loss to the tune of $180 bn resulting from 400 extreme weather episodes over a 30-year-span. Across the world, more than 7.65 lakh people died as a result of over 9,400 extreme weather events during the same period. The economic fallout on the international scale runs to $4.2 trillion (adjusted for inflation). The most fatalities were attributed to storms (35%), heat waves (30%), and floods (27%). Ironically, seven of the 10 most affected countries happened to be high income nations, which include Italy, Spain and Greece. The timing of the release of this report is telling — just days after the World Economic Forum ranked extreme weather events aided by climate change as the second most considerable global risk, trailing behind armed conflict and war.

What has been a pronounced pain point for India over the past few years is a phenomenon that meteorologists have described as an early spring-like phase, a product of prolonged dry weather and unreasonably high temperature. Per the IMD, January 2024 was said to be the third-warmest on record, with an average mean temperature of 18.9°C, and the fourth driest since 1901s, which made it one of the most arid winter months in recent memory. What was once considered as the beginning of the spring season has gradually made way for temperatures that feel more like April. Experts say this is indicative of a fundamental shift in the country’s climate that could soon render the notion of spring obsolete.

It’s a shift that could have a far reaching impact on our agricultural output. Recent reports suggested that almost two million hectares of cropped land area were affected due to natural extreme events across India in FY 2023, down from 2.37 million hectares in the previous year. Data from the Centre for Science and Environment pegs the quantum of agricultural damage from extreme weather events last year to 3.2 million hectares of crops, while highlighting that 93% of days in the first nine months of this year was marked by heat and cold waves, cyclones, lightning, heavy rain, floods, and landslides.

The extreme events are disrupting traditional weather cycles, shortening the spring season and altering its characteristic temperate status, which in turn endangers agriculture, biodiversity, and cultural practices rooted in seasonal transitions. North India skipped winter substantially, as the Himalayan snow deficit affected Uttarakhand (-86%), Himachal Pradesh (-73%) and Sikkim (-82%). This has entailed a worsening of the water crisis as well, exacerbated by 96% rainfall deficit in Central India. Burying our heads in the sand on the strength of perceived ranking advantages won’t cut ice anymore.