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Under global warming and climate change (CC), the vulnerable piece of land is India's Eastern-Himalayan-Region (EHR), where millions' livelihood activities are at risk. Quantifying the degree of CC-induced vulnerability over the highly climate-sensitive mountain zone is challenging due to data inadequacy. This paper attempted to assess the CC perception of kiwifruit growers under EHR and the impact of CC on its cultivation. Perceived and scientific data were used for accurate decision-support information. The climatic variables of two locations were analyzed for trend using Mann–Kendall's test. Results suggested that the rainfall trend was found non-significant for both locations, but there was a negative trend during winter for Pasighat and during all seasons for Itanagar. Maximum temperature exhibited an increasing trend for annual, and minimum temperature showed an increasing trend across seasons for the Pasighat region. For the Itanagar region, the maximum temperature was found to have a significantly increasing trend in all seasons, while the minimum temperature showed an increasing trend during winter and annual seasons. Morning relative humidity showed an increasing trend for annual data for Pasighat, while annual evening relative humidity was significantly increased for Itanagar. The study shows that the indigenous farming communities were following shifting cultivation and diversifying their traditional agriculture to kiwifruit cultivation as an adaptation strategy. The community had a clear perception of CC trends and an inadequate perception of the impact on agriculture, therefore, engaging indigenous communities and other stakeholders to postulate a comprehensive adaptation and mitigation strategy for CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical inland capture fisheries are susceptible to a series of vulnerabilities such as habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, pollution, overfishing, invasive species and anthropogenic climate change. A comprehensive review of the impact of climatic uncertainties on Indian inland fisheries has not been adequately attempted yet. Recent approaches emphasizing ecosystem-based management in a regional context, specific to inland fisheries for combating climatic changes, have not been reported to date. The paper presents a critical bibliometric review of the climatic vulnerabilities faced by Indian inland fishery resources and various adaptive and mitigation strategies put forward by the country for the sustainability of the resources. In this communication, a systematic review of the impact of climate change and other stressors on various inland ecosystems of the subcontinent and the ecosystem-based management strategies adopted in India is presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to estimate a high-resolution spatiotemporal distribution of temperature rise under climate change for effective adaptation and mitigation planning. This paper studies the threshold crossing time (TCT) for eight Indian warming targets (IWTs) between 1.5 and 5 °C based on regional climate models (RCMs) participating in The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia project. To evaluate the performance of CORDEX experiments in simulating the near-surface mean temperature, the model performance index (MPI) is used which represents that the CanESM experiment performs best for simulating Tmean over India. All India average Tmean projected by the multi-model ensemble (MME) represents that 1.5 °C TCT is about 2033 ± 3 and 2028 ± 3 in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. During the twenty-first century, Indian subcontinent can experience five IWTs (1.5–3.5 °C) under RCP4.5 and all eight under scenario RCP8.5. The fastest warming region in India is the western Himalayan region (North India) and north-west region (Indian Thar Desert). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to environmental change, including biodiversity change, is both a new imperative in the face of global climate change and the oldest problem in human history. Humans have evolved a wide range of adaptation strategies in response to localised environmental changes, which have contributed strongly to both biological and cultural diversity. The evolving set of locally driven, 'bottom-up' responses to environmental change is collectively termed 'autonomous adaptation,' while its obverse, 'planned adaptation,' refers to 'top-down' (from without, e.g. State-driven) responses. After reviewing the dominant vulnerability, risk, and pathway approaches to adaptation, this paper applies an alternative framework for understanding human adaptation processes and responding more robustly to future adaptation needs. This adaptation processes-to-pathways framework is then deployed to consider human responses to biodiversity change caused by an aggressive 'invasive' plant, Lantana camara L., in several agri-forest communities of southern India. The results show that a variety of adaptation processes are developing to make Lantana less disruptive and more useable—from avoidance through mobility strategies to utilizing the plant for economic diversification. However, there is currently no clear synergy or policy support to connect them to a successful long-term adaptation pathway. These results are evaluated in relation to broader trends in adaptation analysis and governance to suggest ways of improving our understanding and support for human adaptation to biodiversity change at the household, community, and regional livelisystem levels, especially in societies highly dependent on local biodiversity for their livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines climate change adaptation and gender issues through an application of a feminist intersectional approach. This approach permits the identification of diverse adaptation responses arising from the existence of multiple and fragmented dimensions of identity (including gender) that intersect with power relations to shape situation-specific interactions between farmers and ecosystems. Based on results from contrasting research cases in Bihar and Uttarakhand, India, this paper demonstrates, inter alia, that there are geographically determined gendered preferences and adoption strategies regarding adaptation options and that these are influenced by the socio-ecological context and institutional dynamics. Intersecting identities, such as caste, wealth, age and gender, influence decisions and reveal power dynamics and negotiation within the household and the community, as well as barriers to adaptation among groups. Overall, the findings suggest that a feminist intersectional approach does appear to be useful and worth further exploration in the context of climate change adaptation. In particular, future research could benefit from more emphasis on a nuanced analysis of the intra-gender differences that shape adaptive capacity to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the general notion that dynamical downscaling leads to added accuracy in both historical simulations as well as climate change projections, this paper investigates its validity over India using historical data (1975-2005) from the CORDEX models and their driving global climate models (GCMs) from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), and comparing them against observed temperature and rainfall. We find that downscaling invariably leads to an improvement in the spatial pattern of surface air temperature, but compared to the driving GCMs, the errors in magnitude after downscaling are even worse in some cases. In regard to JJAS rainfall simulations, the CMIP5 driving GCMs are found to be superior to their dynamically downscaled counterparts both in terms of spatial patterns as well as magnitude of errors. Both CMIP5 driving GCMs as well as the CORDEX models underestimate rainfall during JJAS; however, negative bias in CORDEX models is worse. Unlike the driving CMIP5 GCMs, their dynamically downscaled counterparts simulate an early onset followed by a slow and late withdrawal of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. The frequency of occurrence of rainfall intensities is simulated well by both sets of models in the lower intensity regime (0-20 mm/day); however, for higher intensities, the driving CMIP5 GCMs underestimate whereas the CORDEX models overestimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present regional climate change projections for the Tamil Nadu state of India, simulated by the Met Office Hadley Centre regional climate model. The model is run at 25 km horizontal resolution driven by lateral boundary conditions generated by a perturbed physical ensemble of 17 simulations produced by a version of Hadley Centre coupled climate model, known as HadCM3Q under A1B scenario. The large scale features of these 17 simulations were evaluated for the target region to choose lateral boundary conditions from six members that represent a range of climate variations over the study region. The regional climate, known as PRECIS, was then run 130 years from 1970. The analyses primarily focus on maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall over the region. For the Tamil Nadu as a whole, the projections of maximum temperature show an increase of 1.0, 2.2 and 3.1 °C for the periods 2020s (2005-2035), 2050s (2035-2065) and 2080s (2065-2095), respectively, with respect to baseline period (1970-2000). Similarly, the projections of minimum temperature show an increase of 1.1, 2.4 and 3.5 °C, respectively. This increasing trend is statistically significant (Mann-Kendall trend test). The annual rainfall projections for the same periods indicate a general decrease in rainfall of about 2-7, 1-4 and 4-9 %, respectively. However, significant exceptions are noticed over some pockets of western hilly areas and high rainfall areas where increases in rainfall are seen. There are also indications of increasing heavy rainfall events during the northeast monsoon season and a slight decrease during the southwest monsoon season. Such an approach of using climate models may maximize the utility of high-resolution climate change information for impact-adaptation-vulnerability assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's position on climate change negotiations is likely to have far reaching implications for the success of global climate cooperation. Since the beginning of negotiations, the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) remained the centerpiece of India's stand. The stand started to evolve at the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Copenhagen in 2009, when India accepted voluntary commitments to reduce emission intensity. Though India still swears by CBDR, status of the principle in the negotiations has become doubtful after the Durban Climate Conference in 2011 committed all parties to take emission targets. This paper traces major transition points in India's negotiating position over the years and provides a descriptive context of its climate-related concerns. It analyzes the interview responses of 15 top scientists, experts, and negotiators to build upon core areas of climate change issues in India, its future role, and position in negotiations. Interviewees, in general, were in favor of protecting the carbon space for the poor who had very low emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]