Attribution of extreme events in India

Co-Author: Arpita Mondal

Co-Author: Deepti Singh

Climate change is expected to alter the magnitude and frequency of extreme events such as droughts, heat waves and floods. India being the second most populous country in the world with a substantial population living in poor conditions, such extreme events are likely to cause a lot of damage in terms of loss of both property and lives. A natural question of scientific and social interest to arise from the links between climate change and extremes is whether observed long-term hydrometeorological changes or particular extreme events are resulting from anthropogenic influence or are a part of natural climate variability alone. The proposed study aims at analyzing both long-term changes in extremes and likelihoods of individual events in the Indian region and attribution of such changes/events to human-induced climate change. Of particular interest are the changes in magnitude and frequency of heat waves and the likelihood of particular heat wave events such as the heat wave of 2015 which killed about 2000 people in India. Finally, the attribution analysis is going to be linked to impacts in terms of loss and damage for better planning and preparedness against such disasters.

The multiple ensemble members in the LENS dataset as well as the pre-industrial control runs can be used to understand the factual/counterfactual worlds with or without external forcings and therefore are suitable for detection and attribution analyses such as the one proposed.