PREPARING
FOR HEAT WAVE 2020
#BeatTheHeatIndia
#BeatTheHeatIndia
What
is a heat wave?
Heat wave is a period of abnormally high
temperatures, more than the normal maximum temperature that occurs during the
pre-monsoon (April to June) summer season.
The extreme temperatures and resultant atmospheric conditions adversely affect
people living in regions reeling under heat wave conditions as they may cause dehydration, heat exhaustion, physiological stress and sometimes even death.
Heat wave develops
gradually, adversely affects humans, animals, crops and even causes death. In
fact, it has emerged as one of the major severe weather events around the globe
in recent years. The years 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 have been confirmed as the
four warmest years on record. In 2019, unlike earlier years, even night
temperatures refused to come down.
India too is experiencing
increased instances of heat waves every year - 23 States were affected by heat
waves in 2019, up from 19 in 2018. Many cities recorded all-time high
temperatures, exceeding 45 degrees Celsius in some of the worst-affected States.
We had to prepare for harsher heat waves in 2020.
Earlier, NDMA used to organise
its national workshops on heat wave in collaboration with State Governments in
February (2017 at Hyderabad, Telangana; 2018 at Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh; and
2019 at Nagpur, Maharashtra) as the heat wave onslaught in the country
typically starts by the latter half of March. This time, the planning and
preparedness had to start even earlier. Consequently, the fourth National
Workshop on Heat Wave was organised on December 5-6, 2019, in collaboration with
the Government of Karnataka.
Speaking on the occasion,
Shri G. V. V. Sarma, Member Secretary, NDMA, stated that Climate Change has led
to the rise of average summer temperature by 0.5 degrees Celsius in past five
years. Since 2016, much has been done already with the active involvement of
different state governments and civil society. Shri Sarma was referring to the release,
updation and effective implementation of the National Guidelines on Heat Wave,
preparation of Heat Action Plans by vulnerable States and cities, regular
follow-up and monitoring by NDMA, extensive awareness generation campaigns and
preparedness workshops in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The number of deaths due
to heat wave related illnesses has reduced drastically 2016 onwards. However,
there is no scope for complacency, he said.
Besides
sensitising the States to the need of updating and implementing specific Heat
Action Plans, this workshop also discussed the integration of various development
plans into heat action plans, increasing forest coverage and green areas to
reduce heat wave risk well as climate change impacts.
Some vulnerable States
shared their experiences and best practices to help other stakeholders prepare
and implement their Heat Action Plans. The success stories from these States
emphasised the importance of advanced planning, better preparedness and timely
intervention.
Over the two days,
stakeholders discussed the road map for further reducing the adverse effects of
heat wave in 2020. Let us hope that this timely intervention and effective
communication campaigns will empower vulnerable communities to deal with the
deadly heat waves.
Technical Sessions
i) Climate change and Planning Heat
wave risk reduction
ii) Early warning, forecasting and Preparedness for
heat wave
iii) Experience Sharing & lessons learnt for
heat wave mitigation measures
iv) Capacity building &Enhancing effective
response to Heat wave
v) Inter agency coordination and effective
governance
1. Comments will be moderated by NDMA'seditorial team. 2. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published. 3.Please write complete sentences. Do not type comments in all capital letters, or in all lower case letters, or using abbreviated text. (example: u cannot substitute for you, d is not 'the', n is not 'and'). 4. We may remove hyperlinks within comments. 5. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection.
Comments
Post a comment