Creating a Climate Threats and Vulnerability Atlas

Recently a Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas for India has been created by the scientists of Climate Research and Services (CRS). CRS functions under the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).Every year, the Indian Meteorological Department celebrates its foundation day on January 14. The map was launched during this year’s celebrations. It was launched by the Union Minister of Earth Sciences Dr Jitendra Singh. The IMD was established in 1875. It operates under Minister of Earth Science. It is responsible for meteorological observations, seismology and weather events. It is one of the six regional meterological centres of the World Meteorological Organization.

Features of the atlas

• It provides information about heat waves, cold waves, extreme rainfall, thunderstorm, lightning, and snowfall, cyclones, winds, and fog and hail storm.
• It provides vulnerability values and hazards values. These values were calculated using the historical climate data of the meteorological department.
• It provides month – wise hazard levels of each district.
• It has 640 maps. They all have categories ranging from moderate, low, high and very high.
• The map provides Normalised Vulnerability Index for each district.
• Lightning causes highest casualties in India. It is followed by floods, cyclones and fog. They also cause high economic and livelihood losses.

Climate Research and Services

• The headquarters of CRS is located in Pune. It provides weather forecast, AWS data, gridded data, radiation data, agro met data, and meteorological data.