Indian Ocean hit by six heatwaves in 2021, temp rising by 0.15 degrees Celcius per decade
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Loading... - Viransh Chabra
- 25 Mar 2022
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With the effects of climate change becoming more and more visible, the marine world is set to face the brunt of ocean warming. The Indian Ocean witnessed six marine heatwaves in 2021 over a period of 52 days. The situation was grim in the Bay of Bengal, which suffered four of the six weather-related events.
The information was released by Minister of Science & Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Thursday indicating the rampant impact of climate change on oceans surrounding the country. "These heatwaves did not break all previous records but were above normal. The western Indian Ocean heatwaves in 2021 were in the top four years in terms of the number of events," the minister said in his reply.
The weather-related incident is not a single event and the tropical Indian Ocean has been facing the brunt of rising temperatures for decades. The minister informed that the western Indian Ocean region experienced a four-fold rise in marine heatwave events (increasing at a rate of 1.5 events per decade) and the North Bay of Bengal experienced a two-to-three-fold rise (at a rate of 0.5 events per decade).
"In recent decades, the tropical Indian Ocean has experienced a rapid increase in ocean warming with an average rise in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) of about 1-degree Celsius over the period of 1951-2015 at a rate of 0.15 degrees Celsius per decade," The Ministry of Science & Technology said in a statement.
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A recent study by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) also highlighted the dire situation, showing that the western Indian Ocean had a total of 66 Marine Heat Wave (MHW) events while the Bay of Bengal had 94 events during 19822018.
"The monsoon forecast models used by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) incorporate the ocean surface temperatures as input data. These forecasts can be used for advance planning and disaster management," the written reply read.
A report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had dire warnings for India stating that 12 coastal cities in the country could be submerged by the end of the century. The cities could be nearly three feet underwater by the century's end, the climate change report has warned. The cities include Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi, and Visakhapatnam, among others. Read More...
