The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) launched a climate atlas in the form of a web portal called ‘TERI Climate Tool’ or TCT to assist policy planning at the regional level and help decision-makers to be climate ready.
The atlas has been developed under the project PREPARE, under phase 2 of the Norwegian Framework Agreement between TERI and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. TERI also launched the Flood Early Warning System for predicting urban floods for Jorhat city (FEWS-J) in Assam. Replicable for any part of India, the FEWS-J tool provides a warning with a lead time of 72 hours about flash floods or heavy rainfall.
Delivering the keynote address Shri Jishnu Baruah, Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Assam, Revenue and Disaster Management Department, said, “Science-based tools such as TERI Climate Tool (TCT) and Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWS), backed by robust scientific knowledge, are necessary to mainstream robust climate information, early warning and risk reduction services into policy and decision-making.
“Assam faced three waves of floods this year which impacted 30 districts. ICT enabled tools are essential for the mitigation of risks and to expand the regional disaster risk reduction efforts of various cities in Assam including Guwahati and Jorhat, located at the banks of the Brahmaputra River,” the Secretary added.
About 12% or 40 million hectares of India’s geographical area is subject to riverine and flash floods. Hydro-meteorological disasters especially flood has the highest percentage share of total deaths in India. TERI chief Ajay Mathur said: “The climate science based tools have a significant role in enabling the policy decisions of tomorrow. India needs to prepare now. The focus should be in the direction of making cities and other areas climate-resilient.”
The tool addresses the current gap in the understanding and provisioning of scientific knowledge towards regional policy planning. This first of its kind tool provides information on climate variables like temperature, precipitation, and various climate statistics including extreme climate indices for past and future time period over national, state wise, district wise and city scale. The tool has huge potential in aiding climate-related sectoral planning for agriculture and water sector.
