Scientists said on Wednesday that climate change was a major contributing factor in the intense rains that caused tragic landslides in India last month, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people.
On July 30, landslides caused by monsoon rains in Kerala, a coastal state in the south, buried houses and people in the Wayanad district beneath tons of rock and earth.
According to World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists that developed peer-reviewed techniques for evaluating the potential impact of climate change on particular severe occurrences, there is an obvious connection between the planet’s warming and the heavy rainfall.
“The landslides… were triggered by a burst of rainfall that was made about 10 percent heavier by human-caused climate change,” the WWA analysis by 24 scientists said, noting more than 140mm (5.5 inches) of rain fell in a single day.
“Before climate change, similar downpours in Kerala were incredibly rare,” it said.
The specialists claim that higher temperatures brought on by fossil fuel emissions cause the atmosphere to hold on to more moisture, which increases the amount of rainfall.
It also said that the forest cover in the Wayanad region had decreased by an incredible 62% since 1950, “reducing slope stability” and increasing the risk of landslides.
“Climate change is manifesting itself catastrophically in real time through the Wayanad landslides,” stated Imperial College London study participant Mariam Zachariah.
The monsoon rains, which fall between June and September, provide relief from the summer heat, are essential for agriculture, and replenish water supplies, but they also frequently cause havoc.
The WWA cautioned that unless things change quickly, the rain that caused the landslides might get worse. It said the rain was the third-heaviest one-day occurrence on record in the area, only surpassed by storms in 2019 and 1924.
“One-day bursts of monsoon rainfall will continue to become even heavier, risking even deadlier landslides, until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy”, researchers said.
Even though India is the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, it has made a commitment to reach a net zero emissions economy by 2070, which is two decades after the majority of the industrialized West.
For the time being, the majority of its power is generated from coal.
According to WWA scientist Arpita Mondal of the Indian Institute of Technology, “these direct threats to people in India will continue to escalate as the climate warms and humans continue to regulate natural systems.”
