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Future Heat Wave Projections and Impacts

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Climate Change Signals and Response

Abstract

Heat waves are a special class of climatic hazards that have a disastrous impact on many different systems. In the recent past, there has been a considerable improvement in scientific understanding of heat waves; however, most of this understanding is limited to the climatology of developed countries. There is a limited systematic understanding of heat waves and their impact on developing countries including India. This chapter reviews studies in establishing plausible links between climate variations, climate change and the heat waves, particularly in the context of India. The chapter also tries to understand the mechanisms responsible for the occurrence of heat waves. Further, the chapter shows evidence from studies that use climate models with statistical techniques for more accurate characterization of heat extremes and improving projections. Heat waves in India are expected to be intense, more frequent, and to be of longer duration in future due to global warming. This possibility will make the population more vulnerable to the impact of heat waves. The consequence of future heat waves might be severe; therefore, there is an urgent need to prepare a strategy to deal with its likelihood consequences. This is important in the context because the current policy does not consider heat waves as a serious hazard. The content of this chapter aims to provide the general public, policy makers and planners with the kind of effectual information which would enable them to understand and deal with the heat waves as a natural disaster.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See IMD glossary for the definition of heat waves. The glossary can be accessed at imd.gov.in/section/nhac/termglossary.pdf (as on 1 January 2018).

  2. 2.

    ENSO index is defined based on Oceanic Nino Index (ONI), which uses sea surface temperature of Nino 3.4 region. The ONI values are estimated for 3-month window and are used to define ENSO index. See Murari et al. (2016) for details.

  3. 3.

    Downscaling is an approach of obtaining regional high-resolution climatic variables from GCMs. See https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/climate-model-downscaling/ for further detail on downscaling.

  4. 4.

    GCMs are typically at coarse spatial and require a high degree of parameterization (i.e. simplification and approximations) of the physical mechanisms of the earth system at the designed resolution of the GCM. This results in error in simulation of climatic variables from the GCM. The error is generally defined with respect to the observed data. This error is referred to biases in the simulation of GCM, which needs to be corrected before using the GCM simulations for impact assessment. See Murari et al. (2015) for bias correction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai, 400088, Maharashtra, India

    Kamal Kumar Murari

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, 400076, Maharashtra, India

    Subimal Ghosh

Authors
  1. Kamal Kumar Murari
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  2. Subimal Ghosh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Subimal Ghosh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, and Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Chandra Venkataraman

  2. Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, and Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Trupti Mishra

  3. Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, and Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Subimal Ghosh

  4. Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, and Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Subhankar Karmakar

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Murari, K.K., Ghosh, S. (2019). Future Heat Wave Projections and Impacts. In: Venkataraman, C., Mishra, T., Ghosh, S., Karmakar, S. (eds) Climate Change Signals and Response. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0280-0_6

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