india

Updated: Nov 14, 2019 03:50 IST

India recorded an increase of 21 million daily exposures to wildfires between 2015 and 2018 compared to 2001-04 period according to a Lancet report released on Friday.

Of the 196 countries reviewed by Lancet, 152 saw an increase in annual daily population exposure to wildfires in 2015–18, compared with in 2001–04. Climatic changes, including increasing temperature, and earlier snowmelt which contributes to hotter and drier conditions, increase risk of wildfires, the report said.

The data was derived from NASA Terra and Aqua satellites and later an annual sum of people experiencing a fire event per day was calculated. India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Mexico recorded the largest increase. The report which underlined importance of meeting the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels to ensure children have a healthy future also said that last year, an increase of 220 million heatwave exposures affecting older populations globally was observed, breaking the previous record set in 2015.

The rise in heatwave exposure events, 11 million more than in 2015 was due to a series of heat waves across India which recorded 45 million additional exposures; across central and northern Europe which recorded 31 million additional exposures in the EU and across northeast Asia, where heat waves affected Japan, the Korean peninsula, and Northern China. “There is no clear trend in wildfires in India since 2001. When monsoon is weak, fires go up but if there is a good monsoon incidences come down. We haven’t yet assessed if there is an increase in area of wildfires,” said a senior official from the Forest Survey of India.