📍El Nino is not the only threat, there’s AMOC too

Grappling with El Niño, Super El Nino this year, we are au courant with factors that affect our climate and what climate change is doing to our weather, our resources and our well-being. There is another rather huge factor affecting our climate that we know considerably less about. That factor is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. That is quite a mouthful isn’t it? Let’s just work with AMOC, it’s easier.

AMOC is a broad swath of ocean currents in the Atlantic which is crucial to keep the waters of the world’s oceans circulating. Many parts of the global climate depend on this circulation and the ocean currents doing their thing properly. The AMOC swath carries warm water, salt and nutrients from the tropics to Europe and the Arctic and brings back cold water from deeper ocean layers back to the tropical region. When the cold water from the north enters the Indian and Pacific oceans, it directly impacts weather patterns in the Asia–Pacific region. One weather pattern that is impacted significantly is the Indian monsoon. 

The bad news is that the AMOC has been slowing down in recent years. Scientists are warning that this slowdown is now such that it could ultimately lead to the collapse of the AMOC itself. Slowdown is bad enough, a collapse would have dire consequences for every region of the world. A slowing or collapse of the AMOC would disrupt the redistribution of heat across the globe, leading to widespread turbulence in the climate. 

If the warm waters of the south were not to reach the north, Europe would see considerable cooling and the east coast of America would witness a rise in sea levels. According to climate models, in the Asia- Pacific region there would a southward shift in the rainfall belts and changes in the timing of when that rain comes. The monsoon systems could see massive disruption, with the Indian SW monsoon system being particularly vulnerable. 

With the unchecked rise in global warming the AMOC is likely to be weakened more rapidly. If this happens , the southward shift of the current rainfall belts will intensify and take away the rain from current monsoon regions. What that means is that the Indian monsoon could slip off the subcontinent. One need not spell out how dire that scenario is and how severe its implications will be. Judging by the global lack of commitment to do anything about arresting global warming, the only choice that India and the countries of the Asia-Pacific have, is to prepare adaptation plans. Plan aggressively for water conservation on a massive scale.

📍Ken-Betwa Link: Development or more mindless discrimination?

Linking the Ken and Betwa rivers has become an issue once again. Members of the communities living along these rivers are protesting this in novel ways, lying on simulated funeral pyres in the river waters, starting hunger strikes in a submerged state, or standing in the river with nooses around their necks. “We’ll turn into Durga and Kali,” say the women protesting in chest-deep water. The images are powerful, disturbing, they tell you how much this move has upset those who live along the river and venerate it.

I have travelled through this landscape a few times over the years. In Panna the Ken river flows with a rare serenity, almost stillness. The forests are alive with biodiversity, the terrain rugged yet beautiful, and the river sustains not only wildlife but entire communities of farmers, fishers, forest dwellers and pastoral families. To stand on the banks of the Ken is to understand that rivers are not merely channels of water to be engineered on drawing boards. They are living ecological systems. Which is why the Ken-Betwa river-linking project is deeply troubling.

The project is being promoted as a solution to Bundelkhand’s water crisis, with promises of irrigation and drinking water for drought-prone districts. But beneath the language of development lies a familiar and disturbing reality: Forests will be destroyed, the ecology dented. Thousands of people will lose their homes and ancestral lands, and they will lose their livelihoods. India’s track record on rehabilitating persons displaced by dams and development projects is very poor, in fact rehabilitation in India has rarely been just or complete. Rather than equitable development, this project too, like earlier dam projects, will help some and discriminate against many others.

Independent estimates suggest that more than 22 villages would be displaced, affecting over 7,000 families in Panna and Chattarpur districts, and of these, 20 villages would be completely submerged by the Ken-Betwa project, many of them Adivasi communities dependent on forests and river ecosystems for survival. The Daudhan dam, the cornerstone of the ₹45,000 cr Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP), alone will submerge large areas, including parts of the Panna Tiger Reserve. The irony is painful: a project meant to solve distress in one region will create another geography of suffering elsewhere.

This is a familiar playbook and India has seen it before. When the Bhakra-Nangal dam was built after Independence, it was hailed as one of the “temples of modern India”. It is located on the Sutlej along Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh and Rupnagar in Punjab. Yet behind that grand national narrative lay the 371 submerged villages which took away everything from some 36,000 families — their homes, assets and livelihoods.

Families were promised cultivable land, rehabilitation and a better future. Decades later, many oustees were still fighting legal battles for proper compensation and land rights. Reports have documented how displaced families were pushed onto barren or disputed lands, while many landless workers and labourers were excluded entirely from compensation because they did not possess formal land titles. This pattern repeated itself across India. 

The Hirakud dam in Odisha displaced more than one lakh people and submerged over 300 villages. Many never received proper rehabilitation.

The Pong dam displaced more than 30,000 families from Himachal Pradesh, many of whom were relocated to Rajasthan with promises of fertile agricultural land. Several families reportedly received arid land without irrigation or clear ownership rights. Some are still fighting for justice after half a century.

The Narmada Valley Development Project, which includes large structures like the Sardar Sarovar Dam and other dams on the Narmada river, led to massive displacement. Over two lakh rural and tribal people lost their homes and lands to reservoir submergence without fair compensation. The Narmada project also caused severe environmental damage, like submergence of dense forests, destruction of local wildlife habitats and obstructed the migration paths for fish. Official statements usually assert that rehabilitation has been completed, but independent investigations document missing land allotments, fake registries, uncultivable plots on a large scale and thousands of excluded families. Even today, many displaced families continue to seek their just dues and compensation. This is the history of “development” and discrimination in India.

Such discrimination results in livelihood collapse. The forest gatherer loses access to forest produce. The fisher loses the river. Tenant farmers, artisans, cattle grazers, boatmen and agricultural labourers disappear from official compensation records because they do not exist in government records. This is why people in the Ken-Betwa region are anxious. They know of the government’s track record on rehabilitation.

Equally worrying is the ecological blindness underlying the river-linking approach itself. Experts have warned repeatedly that the hydro-dynamics of Indian river systems are still inadequately understood. Climate change has already altered rainfall behaviour across India. Rivers that appear “surplus” today may not remain so tomorrow. Yet massive irreversible interventions are being pursued with astonishing confidence.

Bundelkhand’s water crisis is real. But it cannot be solved through ecologically disruptive mega-projects. Destroying the environment and upsetting the natural balance can never provide sustainable solutions, which is what we should be seeking, not shortcuts that have failed time and again. Rivers are not pipelines. Their flow patterns, seasonal rhythms, sediment loads, groundwater recharge functions and biodiversity relationships are deeply interconnected.

Dry regions in India built sustainable systems to ensure water access using decentralised water systems — tanks, ponds, watershed structures, forest protection and groundwater recharge practices adapted to local ecology. Instead of strengthening such systems and improving them, we choose to chase gigantic engineering solutions because they appear politically dramatic. The tragedy is that in such projects, the benefits and burdens are rarely borne by the same people. Water and electricity flow somewhere else, to urban centres and commercial agriculture. But the people who surrender their forests, villages and ancestral lands are often left with nothing more than broken promises.

This appeared in The Asian Age: https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai-ken-betwa-link-development-or-more-mindless-discrimination-1981618

The Indian monsoon, the lifeblood of India’s very survival, has been wobbling for some years now. Climate change is responsible for the turbulence in the monsoon system which has existed, according to some estimates, for 25 million years. This system has been the bedrock of our agriculture, water security and livelihoods for millennia. When climate change begins to disrupt its timing and intensity, it is not simply a weather anomaly; it is a signal that is putting us on alert that the happy, secure systems that were built around the monsoon are becoming unreliable, that the earlier rhythm is disrupted and we must prepare urgently to deal with it.

Preparations to adapt to the new monsoon should have begun earlier. Any further delay in recognising its growing unpredictability will have very serious implications. Agriculture, water security and rural livelihoods are already under stress. We need urgently to establish climate resilient agriculture systems in different agro-climatic zones. We know what is required: greater genetic diversity in the field, both within crops and across the number and range of crops being planted; better soil management, water conservation and sustainable use etc.

Our preparedness to cope must improve quickly. Although the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has gotten much better at forecasting the monsoon’s vagaries and extreme weather events, these are of little use when authorities do not act on the warning and response remains tardy. Our infrastructure remains inadequate to deal with the changing conditions like the large volumes of water after a cloudburst. Our drainage and flood management systems belong to another era when the monsoon was the benign, predictable system we were familiar with. All that has changed. It’s high time we acted.

👉 A recent article by Murali Krishnan makes an interesting read. https://www.dw.com/en/disrupted-monsoons-force-india-to-face-climate-threat/a-78324753

We are getting so used to things like pollution and the turbulent changes in the climate, that we have begun to perceive these as normal. That is scary since it dents our will to act against harmful changes. 

As for the climate, each generation is inheriting a warmer, more degraded environment, so yesterday’s extremes are quietly becoming today’s normal. This “shifting baseline” is one of the more dangerous dimensions of climate change because it is invoking a reaction from the brain. When ecological loss becomes normalised, our ability to recognise the crisis, and demand action, diminishes with it.

I recently came across this insightful article from McGill University that examines why climate change is failing to generate the urgency it demands. The article posits that our brains are poorly equipped to process a threat that is gradual, dispersed and not immediately visible. Our brains are conditioned to focus on an immediate threat not so much on a situation that is worsening gradually and that does not appear immediately threatening. Each generation is only experiencing a somewhat worse, somewhat more damaging degradation of the environment or the biosphere, no generation actually sees the complete degradation or the total loss. So it does not jump up to intervene, and the damage continues.

Link to the article https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/environment/how-do-you-squeeze-climate-change-inside-human-brain

I came across a startling report about birds on the war front in Ukraine using thin fibre optic cables to build their nests.

These cables are used to control attack drones and the birds have found a use for it. It's tragic that a war torn region has so destroyed and disrupted nature that birds are not able to live in peace, build their nests with natural materials like leaves, barks and grasses. They have to make do with what is available.

On the other hand, the adaptability of these birds to their changed environment is inspiring, as is their creativity.

Nature is resilient as these birds show us. But there is a limit to this resilence. If you disrupt and destroy nature beyond a point, the resilience is broken.

Our climate crisis is a living example of this.

📍THE BITTER IRONY OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change alters rainfall patterns and temperature regimes. This in turn influences local water balance and disturbs the optimal cultivation period for particular crops, known as the Length of Growing Period or LGP. According to climate forecasts, land with good LGP will decrease by over 51 million hectare worldwide.

Adequate LGP is required to ensure that medium to long duration crops can successfully grow to maturity. Some crop varieties mature quickly and are ready for use in a shorter period (short duration varieties). Others, especially most cereals, require a longer duration to mature. When the LGP in an agro climatic zone is long, a variety of crops from short duration to long duration can be cultivated there throughout the growing season. This means higher food production. When on the other hand, the LGP contracts, the growing season is shortened, fewer crops can be cultivated thus reducing food production.

Most climate models predict large increases in the LGP of today’s temperate and arctic regions. This means that temperate regions that are currently one crop zones (growing just one crop per year) will become two crop zones (growing two crops per year), resulting in a doubling of food production there.

On the other hand, almost half the production potential of tropical countries like India could be lost. The biggest blow to food production is expected to come from the loss of multiple cropping zones. The worst hit areas are predicted to be those where favorable weather allows farmers to take two to three crops in a year. These areas are predicted to turn into single crop zones, where only one crop can be taken in a year because the LGP will have shrunk or shifted In a perverse irony, the develop/ temperate countries will experience an increase in agriculture production as temperate regions get warmer. 

The regions which because of their industrialization and huge emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) are responsible for wrecking the climate will actually end up being its beneficiaries. On the other hand, today’s developing world in the tropics, which has not contributed to creating this climate hazard, will be its worst victim, and will suffer a loss in agriculture productivity, with serious consequences for food availability and hunger.

 📍How Climate Change is Starving the Himalayan Herders

The pastoral communities of India (the herders who rear sheep, goats, cattle, camels as also yaks in our northern and hilly states) live a transhumance life, moving across regions with their animals, in search of pastures. Such a system allows grazed pastures to recover and regenerate while new pastures ensure their animals had sufficient food throughout the year.

The livelihood of the mountain pastoralists is based on a delicate seasonal migration: taking their herds high up into the mountain pastures (bugyals) in the summer, and bringing them down to the valleys in the winter.

But global warming is disrupting this ancient rhythm. As the Himalayan glaciers melt at an increasingly rapid pace and weather patterns become highly erratic, the vegetation cycles of these high-altitude pastures are changing. The grass is often not there when the herders arrive.

Their traditional knowledge tells them when to move their flocks, but climate change has erased the reliability of that knowledge. Without adequate grazing lands, the animals starve, and the traditional pastoralist economy collapses. 

Clearly, there is an urgent need to draft adaptation strategies for these high-altitude communities.

We have seen for some years now how climate change is not just altering the Himalayan landscape; it is changing the disease profile of the mountains too. 

Warmer winters, shrinking snowfall and changing rainfall patterns have changed the ecosystem so radically that vector borne diseases practically unknown at higher altitudes till now are becoming increasingly visible. Mosquitoes carrying malaria, dengue and chikungunya are now able to survive in the warmer higher altitudes where these diseases were once rare. 

👉 In Jammu & Kashmir, dengue cases almost doubled from 1,709 in 2021 to 3,381 in 2025, while suspected chikungunya cases surged from 7 to 773 during the same period. Himachal Pradesh, which reported no chikungunya cases in 2021, recorded over 200 cases in 2025.

This should be a wake-up call. Mountain communities are now confronting new types of diseases and local health systems do not necessarily have the experience to deal with such outbreaks. Climate adaptation can no longer be viewed solely through the lens of infrastructure or disaster preparedness. Public health systems in the Himalayan states must adapt by strengthening disease surveillance, expanding diagnostic capacity, training healthcare personnel and preparing for outbreaks of dengue, malaria and other climate-triggered diseases.

The challenge does not end there; climate change is also eroding biodiversity, traditional crops and resilient farming systems that have sustained mountain communities for generations. As I have said repeatedly, agrobiodiversity and indigenous knowledge are among our strongest tools for coping with a rapidly changing climate.

There is a clear message here: climate change is no longer a thing of the future. It is rewriting the region's health, agriculture and ecological challenges. Our adaptation policies will have to keep pace with the rate of climate turbulence.

This year’s heat alarm went off with the mercury touching 48.2°C in Banda in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. This weather record must be treated as a shrill warning of dire things to come if we even now refuse to acknowledge that the consequences of global warning are going to border on catastrophic. And we better put adaptation strategies in place NOW.  

Schools shutting at 10 a.m., deserted streets, collapsing livelihoods, and the poor struggling to survive outdoors are no longer isolated episodes. They are signs of the widespread climate catastrophe that our country has entered without preparation, without safeguards, and worst of all, without seriousness. The May 2026 report on Banda’s extraordinary heatwave wasn’t just a weather report of a town; it is the evidence of decades of ecological neglect.

Bundelkhand has always been ecologically fragile, but decades of environmental degradation have pushed the region towards collapse. Deforestation, shrinking water bodies, relentless groundwater extraction, destruction of traditional tanks and ponds, declining tree cover and unsustainable agricultural practices have combined with global warming to create lethal conditions. Concrete expansion without ecological planning has intensified local heat islands. Rivers are drying earlier, soils are losing moisture-retaining capacity, and farming systems have become increasingly vulnerable. Heatwaves that were once occasional are now prolonged, harsher and more frequent.

This is exactly how climate change enters and affects human life; not dramatically in a single moment, but steadily, silently and then suddenly all at once. For years, climate change remained confined to policy seminars, global summits and bureaucratic reports. It was discussed in air-conditioned conference halls as if it were a distant future concern. That illusion no longer survives. Climate change is now inside our homes, affecting our health, livelihoods, food systems and daily survival. The poor laborer working outdoors, the farmer watching crops shrivel, the child unable to attend school because of unbearable heat, the elderly struggling through sleepless nights without cooling, are the real faces of global warming.

Extreme heat is not just uncomfortable, it is deadly. It accelerates water scarcity, destroys crops, reduces labour productivity, worsens malnutrition, and increases disease burdens. Urban centres become furnaces because trees have disappeared and wetlands have been buried under the concrete of development projects. Rural distress intensifies as rainfall becomes erratic and farming turns uncertain. Climate change is now directly linked to food insecurity, indebtedness and migration.

The science behind this crisis has been understood for years. What has been missing is political urgency and the failure to acknowledge ecological wisdom. Sustained work by scientists over decades has tried to draw attention to the fact that tampering with the ecological foundations of food and livelihood security will spell disaster. Repeated warnings were issued about the dangers of destroying biodiversity, replacing resilient local farming systems with monocultures, eroding traditional seed diversity and neglecting community- based natural resource management. We have known since long that bio resources and genetic diversity are not academic concepts but survival tools in an age of climatic uncertainty. But we have not acted.

Despite plenty of evidence that climate shocks would hit the poor the hardest because their survival is directly tied to natural resources — land, forests, water and biodiversity, development policies continued to privilege short-term gains over ecological stability. Rivers were treated as engineering projects, forests as real estate, and agriculture as an industrial input-output exercise divorced from nature.

And here we see the results unfolding before our eyes. Banda is not an exception, it is a warning about other events that are underway. Similar conditions are emerging across large parts of India; from Himalayan regions witnessing glacial instability to coastal belts facing cyclones and salinity intrusion; from drought-prone interiors to cities collapsing under extreme heat. We see that unabated construction is rampant in mountain states like

Himachal and Uttarakhand despite nature’s constant warnings. The climate crisis has moved from planning and prediction to lived reality today. The tragedy is that even now, responses remain fragmented and cosmetic. Responses are devoid of any ecological understanding We have plantation drives with abysmal survival rates of what was planted, infrastructure expansion without environmental safeguards, and climate rhetoric devoid of meaningful applicability. This will will not address the magnitude of the crisis we are facing. What is needed is a fundamental shift in planning the future, helping forests to regenerate, biodiversity conservation , ecological restoration, water security and climate-resilient agriculture rooted in local knowledge systems, these are the things we need.

Unfortunately, it appears that those responsible for shaping policy are still not listening with the seriousness the crisis demands. Nature’s warning signals have become impossible to ignore. The question is whether society and governments will act before ecological breakdown becomes irreversible. Banda’s unbearable heat is not just a temperature statistic; it is the sound of an ecological alarm bell ringing across India. What is truly heart breaking is that those least responsible for the crisis are paying the heaviest price.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sumansahai/p/48-degrees-c-in-banda-up-is-a-warning?r=6oq097&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Forest Fires On The Rise In A Warming India: Make It Part Of Climate Policy

In the 405th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, the demand for grants included a section on Forest Fire Prevention and Management. This must be welcomed given the growing forest fires in India, especially in the mountain states.

India’s forests are increasingly vulnerable due to rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells and extreme weather events. These are no longer abstract projections; they are now visible on the ground as devastating forest fires. Forests that were once naturally moist and resilient are now like tinderboxes.

Forest fires are now frequent and have a devastating impact on biodiversity, wildlife and the overall environment. Forests in Uttarakhand used to catch fire in the dry summer season every year, but now occur at other times as well. I have watched with despair fires as early as February and March, sometimes earlier. The forest department recorded over 60 fires in the February- March period, that scorched over 40 hectares of forest land. Repeated fires also weaken the regenerative capacity of forests, making them more vulnerable to future climate shocks.

Climate scientists have warned for decades if we can’t control global warming, wildfires will become more frequent and more intense. Now wildfires are becoming more and widespread, even in tropical rainforests, where they are not typical and are particularly damaging. Hotter, drier weather caused by climate change and poor land management create conditions for more frequent, larger and higher-intensity wildfires. In the heatwave of Summer 2026, large forest fires have become frequent, and have burnt large tracts in over 12 states — from Uttarakhand in the north, Gujarat in the west, to Andhra Pradesh in the south, with Madhya Pradesh being the worst-affected.

Focusing on the Himalayan belt, the standing committee recommended that the ministry develop a protocol to reduce and cope with forest fires using modern technologies, including satellites and drones for early detection and alerts, identifying the cause and nature of the fires, and the best way of dousing the flames. Even more welcome, the committee recommended adequate budgetary support to state governments to develop a proactive, AI and data-driven prevention and management approach to minimise ecological damage due to forest fires.

Traditional forest management systems are proving inadequate against the scale and speed of climate-driven fires. This is where Artificial Intelligence can become an important tool for timely action. Globally, AI is already being used for forest fire prediction and prevention. In California, the “Alert California” programme uses AI-enabled cameras and machine learning systems to identify smoke plumes in real time. The system can detect fires at a very early stage, often before they become visible to the local authorities. Early detection has significantly improved response time.

Australia is using AI models that combine satellite imagery, temperature, wind speed, humidity and vegetation dryness to predict fire-prone zones in advance. This allows authorities to deploy personnel and equipment strategically before fires break out.

In parts of Europe, drones equipped with thermal imaging sensors patrol vulnerable forests during peak fire seasons. These drones can identify abnormal heat signatures even at night and in inaccessible terrain. Canada has also begun integrating AI-based monitoring with indigenous land management knowledge to improve fire resilience.

India has the scientific and technological capability to develop similar systems. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) already provides satellite-based forest fire alerts, but these remain largely reactive. AI can help shift the approach from reaction to early detection and prevention. At present the Isro model does fire detection and monitoring via satellite, this effectively detects and monitors forest fires in near real-time, improving identification speed and enabling better mapping of fire-prone areas. This system, however, has limitations, being primarily reactive. It lacks the capability to predict fire outbreaks and address underlying causes like dry conditions, human activity, and monoculture plantations.

The response capacity and the efficacy of alerts is exacerbated by the usually inadequate staff and resources of local forest departments. The satellite-based system has another limitation in fire detection because smaller fires under dense canopy or cloudy conditions can get missed. In order to achieve an effective early warning system, Isro needs to combine satellite data with weather forecasts, humidity levels, wind conditions, vegetation dryness indices, and include local community intelligence.

Countries having more effective management of forest fires use a multi-pronged approach, using drone surveillance, automated camera systems, and very importantly, the infrastructure to effectively record local responses . This integration of ground intelligence with satellite monitoring and AI-driven mapping of fire risks enables them to predict forest fires, not detect them after they have started burning.

India needs to up its act and improve its systems which should be easily done, given the solid foundation of Isro’s satellite proficiency. We need to integrate AI-based tools for predictive analytics and real-time ground integration. India’s system is technologically capable of detecting fires, but advanced global systems are increasingly focused on anticipating them before they become disasters. Involving forest-dwelling communities, drone surveillance, AI-based fire-risk prediction models, and stronger ground preparedness are crucial for a preventive approach to forest fire management. A national AI-driven Forest Fire Early Warning Grid should contain AI models predicting fire-prone districts weeks in advance, mobile alerts sent directly to village communities and forest guards and AI-generated evacuation and containment plans based on terrain and wind direction.

However, technology alone cannot protect forests. Indigenous and local communities possess deep ecological knowledge of forest behaviour, moisture cycles and safe fire practices. AI systems must work alongside community knowledge rather than replace it. We need to treat forest fire prevention as part of our climate adaptation strategy.

Investments in AI-based ecological monitoring today may prevent enormous ecological and economic losses tomorrow.

The Link to the article  - https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai-forest-fires-on-the-rise-in-a-warming-india-make-it-part-of-climate-policy-1963375