Is a signature of socio-economic impact written on the climate?

Abstract

Surging population associated with large-scale colonization, tropical deforestation, and industrialization in parts of Asia that constitute over 60% of the global population may lead to changes in the climate of that region. Identifying such changes is of great importance to scientists and policy makers. Concerning this, an approach is made here to assess the chemical composition in the troposphere over the region that happens to be the globe's longest belt of largest population density (LBLPD) and to assess the long term rainfall pattern of a tropical region lying along the belt of mountain ranges where an intense deforestation has been taking place on a large scale for several decades. Further, this paper reports the long term temperature and rainfall pattern of highly industriatized cities that have one of the fastest population growth rates. The tropospheric levels of CH4, CO and 03 over LBLPD are found to be remarkably higher than those over the stations lying outside the belt. The long term rainfall data of the belt of high mountain ranges shows a significant decreasing trend, whereas the data for adjacent coastal belt, which is normally the upwind side of the mountain belt, does not show any kind of trend. Surface air temperature and rainfall data for industrial cities with population greater than ten million shows a definite increasing trend whereas no trend is seen in data for adjacent non-industrialized towns.

A Study of Maximum and Minimum Temperatures Trends at Junagadh (Saurashtra Region) of Gujarat, India

“…A study by Jones et al (1990) 23 on urbanization and related temperature variation indicates that the impact of urbanization on the mean surface temperature would be no more than 0.05 1C per 100 years. This value appears to be too small when compared with the other studies (Fujibe, 1995;Hingane, 1996) 20, 22 using a similar technique. According to the study for Japan by Fujibe (1995) 20 a rising trend of 2-5 1C per 100 years in minimum temperature has been observed at several large cities in Japan.…”

“…According to the study for Japan by Fujibe (1995) 20 a rising trend of 2-5 1C per 100 years in minimum temperature has been observed at several large cities in Japan. While another study (Hingane, 1996) 22 estimates rising trends of 0.84 and 1.39 1C per 100 years in the mean surface temperature calculated for Mumbai and Kolkata, respectively. Another study (Wibig and G"owicki, 2002) 25 related to the variability of minimum and maximum temperature in Poland reveals that the strongest increase in minimum and maximum temperatures occurs in mid and late winter.…”

Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India

“…Studies carried out by several investigators have shown that the trend and magnitude of warming over India/the Indian sub-continent over the last century is broadly consistent with the global trend and magnitude (Hingane, 1995;Pant & Kumar, 1997, Arora et al, 2005, Dash et al, 2007. Pant & Kumar (1997) analysed the seasonal and annual air temperatures from 1881-1997 and have shown that there has been an increasing trend of mean annual temperature, at the rate of 0.57 C per 100 years.…”

Basin-wide assessment of temperature trends in northwest and central India / Estimation par bassin versant de tendances de température au nord-ouest et au centre de l'Inde

“…Examination of long-term variation in the annual mean temperature of highly industrial and densely populated cities like Mumbai has shown an increasing trend. In Mumbai, the annual mean temperature has increased by 0.84°C per 100 years (Hingane, 1995). These warming rates are much higher than the values reported for the country as a whole.…”