New Delhi: India needs to develop a robust early warning system with coordination between multiple agencies so that disaster forecasts can be used to save lives, Roxy Mathew Koll, one of the recipients of the first Vigyan Yuva Awards, told ThePrint. He is a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.
Koll was awarded the Vigyan Yuva in the ‘Earth Sciences’ category for his work on understanding the impacts of climate change, disaster models, marine heatwaves and extreme weather events.
In an interview with ThePrint, Koll spoke about how the damage caused by climate-driven disasters, such as the Wayanad and Uttarakhand landslides, can be minimised if agencies work in collaboration, and how such events are only going to get worse in the future.
Below are some edited excerpts from the interview.
Please tell us about your work in climate science, especially in climate change and extreme weather recording.
The Indian Subcontinent is a region bombarded with extreme weather events. Many Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have warned of such extreme weather events in this region and how they are expected to become more severe in the coming years.
The densely populated regions of India are now experiencing floods, droughts, heat waves, cyclones, sea level rise, and storm surges. We used to see India as a country surrounded by the seas and mountains. But the seas are warming up rapidly, and the Himalayan glaciers are also melting quickly, churning out these extreme weather events.
As a climate scientist, my job is to understand how global climate change impacts us locally—not only to understand but also to see how we can model or predict these changes and variability—and also project them for the future in the next 10-20 years. This will help us see how the climate is going to change so that we can frame policies on how to tackle these bigger challenges.
In this monsoon season itself, we saw a lot of extreme weather events. For instance, the Wayanad landslides were a result of extreme rains that lashed out in Kerala. Other parts of the country, such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and other regions, also recorded extreme weather events this year. So, we are looking to understand and quantify such events so that we can predict them better and frame the policies better for the future.
Over the past few years, we have witnessed natural disasters prompted by extreme climate events. Are such events going to get worse in the future? What is the importance of early warning systems and weather forecasting in such a scenario?
We don’t call them natural disasters anymore. These are manmade in several respects. If you consider global surface warming an indicator, even a one-degree Celsius change can significantly increase extreme weather events.
These disasters are caused due to man-made interventions at multiple levels—global, national and local. We are collectively responsible for these. Every person in the country should benefit from early warning to safeguard their lives. Nobody should be left out. We at IITM Pune are working in the direction of forecast and climate projections, which are periodically transferred to the Met department (India Meteorological Department or IMD).
The IMD periodically receives our imports and models. They run on the same high-performance computing system that we have at IITM, which is also the fastest supercomputing facility.
There were criticisms against the IMD for missing Wayanad warnings. Could the damage have been minimised if we had a robust early warning system?
We must dissect this particular event as a case study because more than 500 lives were lost, which could have been saved.
I studied the maps from the IMD and the Kerala State Disaster Management Agency (KSTMA), and both of them were starkly different.
This means that we do not even have accurate measurements of rainfall that happened at many of these locations. There is a significant gap. We may not even understand how these landslides manifested without understanding the rainfall recordings and trends.
We will be looking for the pin in the haystack without data. Data is a critical part of understanding these events.
The next part is forecasting. Before I go into that, I should compliment the Met department for having a state-of-the-art forecasting system. We use the same global forecasting techniques used in the US or Europe. But there is one challenge here—tropical weather, especially in Kerala. The weather systems change very fast, sometimes within hours.
The uncertainty of the weather systems also carries a lot of unpredictability. The predictability factor is much lower in these regions than in Europe or the US, where the weather systems are large, slow-moving systems that develop in a few days’ time.
Another vital aspect to consider is that the IMD only provides forecasts.
During a landslide, forecasts issued are only for rainfall. It doesn’t provide or include information on possible impacts like landslides, flash floods and other impacts on the ground. That is not a part of the immediate purview of the IMD.
Our institutions work in silos without a transparent inter-department approach.
For effective early warning, we need to connect data and forecasts with on-ground impacts. We need to connect rainfall forecasts with subsequent landslide forecasts based on the slope of the land and soil conditions. We have the science for it. But we will need to coordinate between multiple departments.
We need an inter-agency framework or a nodal agency to unite all departments. We could have done that in the case of Wayanad.
Now, coming to the policy part, we keep talking about how forecasts were not issued on time. But forecasts do not always save lives and livelihoods.
In Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, people’s livelihoods were lost, and their properties and houses were gone. The survivors cannot go back and start their lives. This means we need effective policies. If we can pay attention to monitoring, forecasts and policies, we can save lives and livelihoods. We need the will, and we need to build a framework to do it.
A recent study led by you highlighted the unprecedented warming of the Indian Ocean. You have also discussed similar trends over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. How would this trend impact the Indian Subcontinent and the coastal states of India?
It is a very important study for the Indian subcontinent, not just for India. We know that the globe is warming rapidly in response to carbon emissions. Now, where is the heat going? Land, atmosphere, ice and other elements together absorb only 7 percent of the heat from global warming.
More than 93 percent of the heat from global warming goes into the oceans. The heat distribution into the oceans is not uniform.
The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean, and it is also warming at the fastest rate.
We know the Bay of Bengal to be one of the warmest basins. It used to have cyclones every year. The Arabian Sea has maybe one cyclone every two years. But now, every year, there is a cyclone. There is a 52 percent increase in cyclones in the Arabian Sea.
There are also more fluctuations in the monsoon. We are observing episodes of short spells of heavy rain. You get a season or a month’s worth of rain in a few days or a few hours’ time—almost like cloudbursts. Climate change is also bringing more errors to the models and forecasts because it is increasing unpredictability.
There are many challenges that we need to work on.
What were your reactions to receiving the first Vigyan Yuva award this year? There was a lot of controversy around the awards themselves. Many scientists were unhappy with the government’s decision to centralise the awards and do away with the cash incentives. What do you have to say about that?
I am overwhelmed by this award. I consider this as a reward for the collective research in the field of climate change in India.
When I started, there were several challenges in bringing science to society. But now, things have changed. There is a better understanding of climate. Through this recognition, science is awarded and the science community is also rewarded.
When we speak about centralising the awards, I feel good because the government is rewarding and recognising your work. The country is awarding you, and not just an institution. I am very happy.
In terms of scrapping most of the existing awards, along with the cash prizes and the incentives that used to come with them, I am unhappy. Scientists should be encouraged and supported massively. In many institutes, the quality of research and the support that scientists are getting is going downhill. We need to encourage our scientists, professors and students.
The support that they currently get in terms of salaries and grants is not up to the mark. There is huge potential in our scientists that can make transformational change.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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