The Future Of The Environment

Today, globally climate change is in crescendo mode.

- Sunita Narain

Last year, in June and July, some 140 wildfires raged across California; 80 people were killed in similar wildfires in Greece; Europe has been sizzling under heat waves; unseasonal dust storms have killed over 500 in India; torrential rains in Japan and other such extreme rain events are devastating crops and homes across vast parts of the world. All of these weather events are far beyond normal variability, called stationarity, as it followed past patterns. Now, we are in the era of the unprecedented and unknown. What we know for certain is that this intensity, variability and ferocity of ‘weird weather’ will only get worse.

The connection with strange weather and climate change is also being seen through studies called attribution. The World Weather Attribution network estimates that climate change has more than ‘doubled the likelihood of the European heat wave’. It has also tripled the likelihood of drought in Cape Town—the South African city that narrowly missed Day Zero— when it would run out of water.