Rising CO2 Levels may Double Floods. 🇮🇳 Target With Rudra 🎯

Part of :- GS paper l - Important Geophysical Phenomenon

Context :-

The report “Impacts of Carbon Dioxide Emissions on Global Intense Hydro-meteorological Disasters” has established a link between climate change and the rising incidence of hydro-meteorological events, specifically floods and storms across the world.

The report has collected climate data from 155 countries over 46 years (1970 to 2016).

The analysis is based on econometric modelling which involves accounting for a country’s vulnerability to hazards, its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population density and changes in mean rainfall.

The number of intense “hydro-meteorological” disasters could increase by 5.4% annually for an average country facing annually nearly one “extreme disaster”.

Hydrometeorological disasters include floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, etc.

Extreme disaster is termed as one that causes 100 or more fatalities and/or affects 1,000 or more people).

The risk of extreme floods or storms could double every 13 years at the rate carbon-dioxide concentrations are building up in the atmosphere.

The yearly increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has been about 2.4 parts per million or about 0.6 % from the base 396.5 ppm level for 2010 to 2016.

India faces 5-10 times more risk for extreme disaster being an average country.