“Climate India 2022: An assessment of extreme weather events” prepared by the reputed Centre for Science and Environment and Down To Earth (CSE/DTE) explores and evaluates the frequency and geography of extreme climate events in India in 2022. The report found that India has seen disasters ranging from heat and cold waves, cyclones, lightning to heavy rain, floods and landslides nearly every day in the first nine months of 2022. The report records that 241 of the 273 extreme weather events in the year claimed 2,755 lives, affected 1.8 million hectares of crop area, destroyed over four lakh houses and killed close to 70,000 livestock — this should alert politicians and policy makers to the urgent need to evolve comprehensive policies to combat such events.

India experienced the warmest and third driest March in 121 years. This year also saw the country’s third warmest April, eleventh warmest August and eight warmest September since 1901, the report collates data to state. However, it is not about a single event but a pattern in which extreme events that occurred once every 100 years earlier have now begun to occur every five years or less. The marginalised communities remain the worst affected by this ramification of Climate Change. “They are fast losing their capacity to cope with these repeated and frequent events” as each month sets a new record, warns the report. It should trigger thought and action.