In news: India submits its Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy to UNFCCC

Background: Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.08° Celsius per decade since 1880, but the rate of warming since 1981 is more than twice of that: 0.18° C per decade. 2021 was the sixth-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) temperature data.

Climate Change Related Events Across The Globe

• Warming Temperatures: Middle of continents are expected to be warmer than coastal areas. The Arctic is heating up about twice as quickly as the global
• Changing Regional Precipitation: With increasing temperature,global average precipitation will also increase in low and mid latitude regions by the end of century.
• Rising Seas Levels: Low-lying coastal regions and small islands in Pacific will be subjected to more frequent flooding or even permanent inundation

Extreme Events

• Hurricane Prone Regions:Hurricanes may start earlier and end later. Theybecomemoreintenseasseasurfacetemperatures
• High Mountain Regions: Shrinking glaciers threaten the extinction of species and High altitude ecosystems.
• Regions Affected by El Niño and Other Patterns in the Atmosphere: El Niño & La Niña events along with seasonal monsoons  may change eventually affecting millions of people in areas like India and
• The Polar Regions: The extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been decreasing Glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are melting too.

Climate change related events in different parts of India

• Hilly areas: About 33 per cent of the biodiversity of the Western Ghats will be lost by 2050 due to extreme weather. Forest will change from evergreen to deciduous and dry
• Northern Plains: The Ganga-Brahmaputra and Indus basins, recorded more water flowing in the river channels due to glacial melt
• Drier regions: Higher temperatures may produce an increasing number of wildfires eliminating slow-growing trees and shrubs and replacing them with fast-growing grasses.
• Islands: Sea level rise and consequent increase in intense tropical cyclones, threaten the existence of islands of India, specially Great Andaman and Nicobar

Reasons of climate change and rising temperature:

Natural Factors:

• Changes in the Earth’s Orbit and Rotation: Amount of summer sunshine in the Northern Hemisphere, affected by changes in the planet’s orbit, appears to be the primary cause of past cycles of ice ages.
• Volcanic Activity: Volcanic eruptions released large quantities of carbon dioxide in the distant past.
• Movement of Crustal Plates: As tectonic plates move over geological timescales, landmasses formed in tropical areas are carried to higher latitudes. Northern Hemisphere has warmed more than the Southern Hemisphere because the former has a larger percentage of Earth’s landmass compared to ocean than the
• El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO): An El Niño warm-water phase changes global weather patterns. South America experiences wetterthanaverageweather,whileNorthAmericaexperiencesmildbutstormierwinter

Anthropogenic Factors

• Reflectivity or Absorption of the Sun’s Energy: Activities such as agriculture, road construction, and deforestation are changing the reflectivity of the earth's surface, leading to local warming or cooling.
• Heat-trapping Greenhouse Gases and The Earth's Climate: Concentrations of the key greenhouse gases have all increased since the Industrial Revolution due to human activities.
• Land use changes: More than half of our gross greenhouse gas emissions are from For example, livestock rearing (96%), Fertilser emission (15 % of farm’s carbon footprint)

 How Climate Change Disproportionately Impacts the World

• Fragility, Conflict, and Displacement: Extreme weather has contributed to conflict and terrorism in fragile states that have led to the displacement of 80 million people from their homes.
• Food and Water Security:Of the 124 million people worldwide, 76%wereaffected byclimateshocksand extremes,according totheFood and AgricultureOrganization
• Global Health: Warmer temperatures could expose as many as one billion people to deadly infectious diseases such as Zika, dengue, and chikungunya.
• Economic Development: The World Bank estimates that the effects of climate change could push an additional 100 million people below the poverty line by 2030.

Mapping India’s Vulnerability to Increasing Temperature and Climate Change

• Tropical country: Tropical country like India is likely to face frequent cyclonic disturbances and monsoon- related
• Extreme events: Climate change is likely to make rainfall erratic, cause sea level rise, and accelerate the frequency and intensity of droughts and
• Heat waves: India suffered from one of the longest ever recorded heatwaves in 2018, with temperatures rising to 48 degree Celsius, resulting in hundreds of
• Inequality: Increasing vulnerablity to extreme heat due to low per capita income, social inequality and a heavy reliance on
• Economic losses: Exposure to rising sea levels and Changing monsoon patterns having already led to a loss of 16 per cent of its per capita GDP since 1991

Global Efforts to Counter Climate Change

India’s Efforts at Global Level

India’s National Efforts to Tackle Climate Change:

Long Term Emission Development Strategy

• In the recently held, COP -27 at Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, India’s LT-LEDS was prepared after extensive consultations with various government entities, state governments, research institutes and civil society organizations.

India Long Term Emission Strategy is based on 7 key pillars:

Concusion:

The two themes of “climate justice” and “sustainable lifestyles”, alongside the principles of Equity and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), in the light of national circumstances, that India had emphasized at Paris, are at the heart of a low-carbon, low-emissions future.

The LT-LEDS is also informed by the vision of LiFE, Lifestyle for the Environment, that calls for a world-wide paradigm shift from mindless and destructive consumption to mindful and deliberate utilization.

Where to use it?

Paper I (Climate Change) Paper 2 (Government Policies) Paper 3 (conservation) Paper I ( Geography Optional : Global Climatic Change, Environmental Policy)

Why in news: Research shows that Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet  Recently Arctic amplification has led to harsh winters in U.S., Summer heat waves in Europe and Floods in Pakistan.

 Theories of Arctic Amplification

• The different theories of how Arctic amplification could be affecting the mid-latitudes fall broadly into three main categories: those that focus on a “wavier” jet stream, the stratospheric polar vortex and “wave resonance”.

Wavier jet stream

• In the UK , if the jet stream path shifts to the south, it pulls down cold air from the Arctic. When it sways north, it brings warm air up from the tropics.
• The strength of the jet stream is driven by the difference in temperature between the cold air over the Arctic to the north and the milder air to the south.
• As the Arctic is warming more rapidly than the mid-latitudes, the temperature difference is declining, which leads to a weaker jet stream.
• The weaker jet stream with diversions from its path increase the likelihood of a wavier jet stream pattern.
• When the jet stream takes larger north-south meanders – known as “Rossby waves” – warm air can penetrate north and cold air can plunge south.

Polar vortex

• As with the jet stream in the troposphere, the polar night jet forms a boundary between the very cold Arctic air and the warmer air over the mid-latitudes. However, if something disrupts the stratospheric polar vortex it can weaken, reverse direction and even split into two. This can trigger a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event where air collapses in over the Arctic, causing a spike in temperatures in the stratosphere – by as much as 50C in just a couple of days.
• This allows the cold air the polar vortex was holding in to spill out into the mid-latitudes during the weeks that follow. This is what brought the “Beast from the East” to the UK in 2018 and is the root cause of the dramatic weather currently hitting the US this winter. 

Wave resonance

• “Wave Resonance” also relates to the jet stream in the troposphere, but only occurs during summer. It is suggested to have played a role in the European heatwave and the Pakistan floods .

• This theory suggests that a weakened jet stream increases the likelihood of it splitting into two distinct jets. One jet then moves north and the other south, potentially trapping weather systems in between. This “quasi-resonance” results in persistent – and often extreme – summer weather.

Where to use?

Paper 1 (Important Geophysical phenomenon, Climate change) Paper 3 (Environment) 

Paper I (Geography Optional : Atmospheric circulation, Jet Streams, Global Climatic Change)

Why in news? Government of India has recently cleared the proposal for the deforestation of large forest land in Great Nicobar so as to carry some developmental work and planned almost twice the area for forestation in Haryana.

Great Nicobar Project

• NITI Aayog-piloted Rs. 72,000- crore integrated project in Great Nicobar which includes construction of a mega port, an airport complex, a township spread over 130 sq. km of pristine forest and a solar and gas-based power plant.

Arguments in favour of project:

• ICTT: The proposed port will allow Great Nicobar to participate in the regional and global maritime economy by becoming a major player in cargo tranship
• Attract existing traffic of ports along the eastern coast of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
• Greenfield International Airport: The proposed airport to be developed as a “joint military-civil, dual-use airport”, and will also cater to tourism as well.
• Township: It will link the infrastructure facilities to complete the physical framework of the new city.
• Power-Plant: Develop power through solar panels and gas.

Concerns associated with project

• Deforestation:5 lakh trees will be felled for port-township-airport-power plant project on the eastern coast of Great Nicobar Island.
• Biodiversity: Reclaiming 300 hectares from the ocean will affect marine biodiversity and also threat to nesting sites of endemic species like Leather back turtles.
• 20 hectares of mangroves will be lost and 10 hectares of corals cover be translocated from Galathea Bay.
• Indigenous communities: Shompen and Nicobarese tribe  will be effected as they are prone to human induced diseases due to influx of domestic and international populations.
• Compensatory afforestation: Taken up on a “non-notified forest land” in Haryana, but not on the island where forested land will be affected.

Mitigation measures to be taken

• Compensate for coral translocation and rseef restoration in Galathea Bay.
• Re-densifying’ existing mangrove patches and planting mangroves in non-forest areas.
• Build wildlife corridors linking the forests and seashore.
• Canopy bridges and underpasses to ease the movement of wildlife
• Declare new protected areas, and draw up monitoring and action plans to study threatened wildlife. 
• Prepare conservation plan to track and monitor leatherback turtles and Nicobar megapode.
• Bays on the western coast of Great Nicobar could be potentially developed as wildlife sanctuaries or conservation reserves.

Where to use?

Paper 3 (Environment Pollution & Degradation, Infrastructure, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.)

Paper I (Geography Optional: Environmental issues in regional planning, Planning for sustainable development)

It is the equivalent of a vicious or virtuous circle – something that accelerates or decelerates a warming trend. Positive feedback accelerates a temperature rise, whereas a negative feedback decelerates it. It was used in United Nations Climate Change Conference in COP-27 at Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

It involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do. Recently, the United Nations Secretary General has warned private corporations to desist the practice of Greenwashing.

Loss and damage refers to the negative consequences that arise from the unavoidable risks of climate change, like rising sea levels, prolonged heatwaves etc. Recently, COP27 Parties proposed the “Loss and Damage Fund Facility” to assist developing countries in responding to loss and damage.

 It is a geographical feature characterized by an elevated section of land with a flat top, whose sides form cliffs or gentle slopes. Grand Mesa located at the northeast edge of the Colorado Plateau east of Grand Junction, Colorado is reportedly the largest mesa in the world.

 It is a rock or a stone that has one or more highly polished and flattened sides that is a direct consequence of sand or ice crystals driven by the wind. An example of a Martian ventifact was named Jake Matijevic. 

• Elephants raided crops almost every night and destroy houses and kill people.
• It not only led to financial stress in agricultural households but also human casualties.

Initiative:

• HATHI MITRAS DAL were created, wherein boys from local villages patrol the affected areas.
• Ensured real time monitoring of elephants through WhatsApp groups.
• Compensation was given for damage done to crops and houses by elephants.
• Teach people to avoid encounters during village-level meetings.
• Villagers were made aware of elephant behaviour and given adequate training and tools to deal with conflict situations.

Where to use it?

Paper 2 (Government policies & Interventions)

Paper 3 (Conservation: Man, animal conflicts)