Chennai floods: Javadekar denies climate change, COP21 expresses concern. What is it really about?

It is ironical that a day after our Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar refused to link the ravaging floods in Tamil Nadu directly to climate change, the world's biggest conference on climate change raised grave concerns around it.

Expressing solidarity with the people of Chennai, the French foreign affairs minister and President of the COP21 (21st Conference of Parties) Laurent Fabius on 3 December, used the rain-ravaged situation as a reminder to alarming climate change.

"The unprecedented magnitude of the flooding confirms yet again that we no longer have time. We must take concrete and urgent action against climate disruption," Fabius reportedly said while calling on the negotiators for speeding up discussions.

Javadekar's denial

• However, speaking to the media on 2 December, Javadekar refuted any connection between the excessive rainfall and climate change.
• "What has happened in Chennai over the last 10 days is a very serious situation, this can't be directly attributed to climate change; it is a natural calamity, but it needs to be tackled effectively," he said.
• Javadekar attributed the calamitous rainfall to continuous irregular monsoons.
• The Minister also linked the excessive flooding to mismanagement in urban planning. "We need to keep our drains clean and open, and we must allow water to flow naturally, even in urbanised India," he added.
• In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who this week called on industrialised nations to do more to reverse global warming, has pointed to changing global weather patterns as a contributing factor behind the flooding.

And the real cause is...

• The rains in Chennai have broken a 100-year record (374 mm in just 24 hours). In November, the city received 1,218 mm of rain, which was almost thrice more than the city's average (407 mm).
• Though experts in India are shying away from directly linking the floods with climate change saying it may be a matter of science-based debate, civic societies are attributing the disaster to the phenomenon.
• However, earlier scientific research has already linked such intense weather phenomena to a changing climate. The IPCC's 5th Assessment Report clearly says that frequency and intensity of such excessive rainfall will increase in future.
• A 2015 study from the Germany-based Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, points out that of the total incidents of excessive rainfall that occurred in the last 30 years, 12 per cent can be contributed to climate change.
• In 2006, Pune's Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) observed that extreme precipitation was increasing in frequency and intensity in India from 1950 to the 2000s.
• According to media reports, New Delhi-based think-tank, the Centre for Science and Environment's (CSE) climate change experts feel that detailed attribution studies are required to link Chennai and climate change. Giving a reference of the the existing studies, the experts at the centre reportedly said that it could be a part of a full blown impact of climate change.