CHENNAI: It has been not more than two months that the city witnessed the worst floods in the century. But, experts warn that the average number of such extreme natural calamities was going to increase.
“With the change in climate, rare events are not going to be that rare anymore and one can expect ‘big’ floods and droughts a little more often”, said Rama Govindarajan from the TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (TCIS) in Hyderabad.
Addressing a gathering part of public talks organised by the Indian Institute of Mathematics (IMSc), she said that though people could cope with the increase in average temperature by 2 degree celsius, they would suffer during extreme conditions such as hot days and massive floods
Citing a comprehensive study by the Royal Society on Flood events which traces the increase in vulnerability to flood events in 2090, Rama said that India was more prone to such extremities. “Now the science does not help in predicting these calamities precisely and if we are able to predict the turbulent flow of the cloud and make fairly short time predictions, the best thing that we can do is to save ourselves from the calamities and minimise loss,” she said.