Climate extremes and their implications for risk and resilience in India

Abstract

Novel approaches to assess the occurrence, distribution and dependence of climate extremes are required to understand their implications for risk and resilience. The complexity of climate systems, intricate ecosystem-climatic interactions, inter-dependence of the climate extremes and prevailing nonstationarity make the risk and resilience assessment a challenging task. Moreover, the risk due to extreme climatic events does not only depend on the magnitude of extremes themselves but also different components of risk, such as exposure and vulnerability. The risk reduction and adaptation to climate change are significantly dependent upon the accurate estimation of hazardous physical event and its interaction with exposure and vulnerability parameters such as population, infrastructure, environmental services and economic assets. Therefore, in context of climate change, a better understanding of the climate extremes in terms of their occurrence, dependence on different factors, dynamics and predictability is necessary to evaluate the implications for risk and resilience further. This thesis presents the study carried out to deliver a comprehensive assessment of extreme climatic conditions over India and their implications for risk and resilience. The initial part of the thesis is devoted to explain the evolution of nonlinearity and determinism in the precipitation and temperature profiles in India during the past century. The investigation is carried out using Delay Vector Variance (DVV) approach, which allows the quantification of the nonlinear component in a time series based on the comparison of variance measures. The results show that both precipitation and temperature exhibit a high degree of nonlinearity and decreasing predictability, particularly in the extreme climate zones of the country.