India (cyclones)

Climate change is increasing rainfall associated with tropical cyclones, and the warming Indian Ocean is increasing cyclone intensity (Clarke and Otto, 2022), meaning the region is at risk of experiencing more storms like the 2020 Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan, which took 128 lives and affected 13.6 million people (Nagchoudhary and Paul, 2020).

Hitting West Bengal as a category 5 tropical cyclone, Amphan was the costliest storm ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean, causing more than US$13 billion in damage (Ibid.).

In May 2021, India’s Northeast was again hit by a catastrophic storm, as the Super Cyclone Yaas wreaked havoc across Odisha, West Bengal, and Jharkhand, causing up to US$3 billion in damage (Podlaha, 2021). This meant a 1.7% loss in GDP for the city of Kolkata, and 0.1% for India overall (Sikdar, 2021).

Roughly one-tenth of all tropical cyclones world-wide affect the Indian subcontinent’s 8000+ km long coastline, exposing low-lying lands to storm surges, coastal erosion and extreme floods, ultimately causing destruction of property, infrastructure and vegetation as well as loss of lives (EPW, 2021).

Between 1970 and 2019, India was battered by 117 tropical cyclones, leading to more than 40,000 fatalities; half of which occurred throughout the first decade of said time span (Business Standard, 2021; Ministry of Earth Science, 2022). Worryingly, research also warns that there may be a possible relationship between Arctic sea ice loss and changes to the Indian monsoon rainfall extremes (Chaterjee et al., 2021).

Dr. M. Ravichandran, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, makes this link clear: “Climate change in Arctic circle [sic] is worrisome even for our region as it impacts our Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Some studies indicate that the extreme heat and rainfall events are also leading to ice melting in that region” (TNN, 2021).

Read more about extreme weather here.

Read more about socio-economic risks related to climate change here.