Raman Sukumar, professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bangalore, told Express: “The magnitude and frequency of events such as the one at Uttarakhand, will increase because of global warming. Climate modelling studies have shown that both ends of the spectrum, like less rainfall coupled with severe droughts or high rainfall along with floods and rivers in spate, will occur very often.”

A recent report by economist Fatih Birol released at the UN Climate Conference at Bonn, stated that global temperatures will “increase dramatically” by 2020 if nothing is done right away. International Energy Agency executive director Maria van der Hoeven quantified this in a statement: “The path we are currently on is likely to result in temperature increase of between 3.6°C and 5.3°C by the end of the century.” Such an increase is way above the 2°C that most countries consider as “acceptable”.

This year, many Indian cities also reported unusually high temperatures. A study published in Current Science in 2012 had predicted up to 2°C rise in temperature in India as early as 2030s. The cities of Shimla and Srinagar, where summers are balmy with temperatures around 27°C and 30°C, respectively, reported unusually high temperatures above 33°C while Jammu was 35-36°C. “We all know what needs to be done and we need not wait till 2020,” N H Ravindranath at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies and Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, stated.

International envoys at Bonn discussed a climate change agreement that they hope to strike by 2015 and put into action in 2020. The key focus of the negotiations was how to transform the world’s energy systems quickly enough towards low carbon.

“Energy efficiency measures in buildings, industries and transport systems are being undertaken now in many countries, including India, but perhaps not on an aggressive scale,” admitted Dilip Ahuja, ISRO professor on Science and Technology Policy, School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, National Institute for Advanced Sciences, Bangalore. Biroh has suggested four energy policies to keep the 2°C climate goal alive. These include energy efficiency measures in buildings, industry and transport, limit construction and use of coal-fired power plants, actions to halve methane (a potent greenhouse gas) release into the atmosphere from oil and gas industries and implementation of a partial phase-out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies.

Ahuja said, “The use of coal-fired stations can be limited in three ways - retire old stations, build fewer new ones and use the current ones at about 70 per cent capacity. Given our power situation, the third is out of question, and the first two will have to be carefully considered.” Methane releases to the atmosphere, he said, can be curbed by tightening leakages in the industrial and transport sectors. They are more difficult to control in the agricultural or livestock sectors, he added.

“Reducing subsidies for fossil fuels is generally a good idea. In the case of kerosene subsidies for the poor, if we can figure out a mechanism to transfer the amount to them, market subsidies can be phased out. To curb greenhouse gas emissions, India should promote investments in wind and solar energy,” Ahuja said.