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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]

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Climate change scenarios generated by general circulation models (GCMs) have too coarse a spatial resolution to be useful in planning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies at regional to river/lake basin scales. This paper investigates the performances of existing state-of-the-art rule induction and tree algorithms, namely, single conjunctive rule learner, decision table, M5P model tree, decision stump, and REPTree. Downscaling models are developed to obtain projections of mean monthly maximum and minimum temperatures ( Tmax and Tmin) as well as pan evaporation to lake-basin scale in an arid region in India using these algorithms. The predictor variables, such as air temperature, zonal wind, meridional wind, and geo-potential height, are extracted from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data set for the period 1948-2000 and from the simulations using third-generation Canadian coupled global climate models for emission scenarios for the period 2001-2100. A simple multiplicative shift was used for correcting predictand values. The performances of various models have been evaluated on several statistical performance parameters such as correlation coefficient, mean absolute error, and root mean square error. The M5P model tree algorithm was found to yield better performance among all other learning techniques explored in the present study. An increasing trend is observed for Tmax and Tmin for emission scenarios, whereas no trend has been observed for pan evaporation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the international level, India is emerging as a key actor in climate negotiations, while at the national and sub-national levels, the climate policy landscape is becoming more active and more ambitious. It is essential to unravel this complex landscape if we are to understand why policy looks the way it does, and the extent to which India might contribute to a future international framework for tackling climate change as well as how international parties might cooperate with and support India's domestic efforts. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, this paper analyzes the material and ideational drivers that are most strongly influencing policy choices at different levels, from international negotiations down to individual states. We argue that at each level of decision making in India, climate policy is embedded in wider policy concerns. In the international realm, it is being woven into broader foreign policy strategy, while domestically, it is being shaped to serve national and sub-national development interests. While our analysis highlights some common drivers at all levels, it also finds that their influences over policy are not uniform across the different arenas, and in some cases, they work in different ways at different levels of policy. We also indicate what this may mean for the likely acceptability within India of various climate policies being pushed at the international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex relationship between climate knowledge production and political action has long been discussed. Critical and post-colonial analyses have looked at how models, used to produce scientific projections of climatic shifts, produce novel concepts of territory by the nation-state. The production of novel political temporalities has largely been ignored, however. This chapter critically analyses and compares two climate reports produced by the Indian Government. These reports, the first climatology reports developed in India, represent two significant shifts in the State's temporal imaginary of climate change and climate politics. First, the State, through these reports, temporally orients itself to the future (models of potential climates-to-be), rather than the past (attribution of historical responsibility to Northern states) as it had during the first half of international climate negotiations at the United Nations. Second, by focusing on the development of regional-specific models, the Indian government subtly continues to resist the imposition of a synchronized, global time of climate change, albeit through a nationalist framework. If the meaning of climate change is ultimately derived from a clash of competing temporalities between Global South and North, as well as between humanity and Nature, it speaks to the necessity of post-colonial scholars to engage directly with the meanings of the future in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1995, a multimillion-dollar experiment – the Indian Ocean Experiment – discovered a dark mass of polluting air hovering above the Indian subcontinent. This mass of air was termed a cloud and found to be composed of a high amount of black carbon that was judged to be the second biggest threat to climate change after carbon-dioxide. In this article, an attempt is made to trace the life of black carbon by documenting its changing forms since the experiment. It emerges that the changing forms allow for the movement of air – smoke from traditional cookstoves and vehicular diesel emissions in India lead to the formation of the cloud – and reveal how an ethnography of air can be undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant invasion is highly responsive to rising temperature, altered precipitation and various anthropogenic disturbances. Therefore, climate anomalies might provide opportunities to identify the relationship of past climate in deriving the distribution of invasive species and to detect their probable future distribution. In this work, we studied the correlation of climate anomaly i.e. temperature and precipitation with an indicative map of plant invasive species (1° grid) of India. The indicative map was generated through the plant data available from the project 'Biodiversity Characterization at Landscape Level'. Climate anomaly was calculated and represented by average temperature and precipitation using 'Climate Research Unit' data for the period of 1901 to 2000. A comparison of local geographically weighted regression (GWR) model and a global ordinary least square regression (OLS) model was carried out for statistical analysis to depict the correlation at 1° spatial grids. Overall, 20,501 records with a total of 9112 unique plots and 161 unique invasive species were recorded in the database that shows a maximum of 15 invasive species in a 0.04 ha nested quadrat. Cumulative analysis showed a maximum of 53 invasive species at 1° grid. Individually, GWR could reveal a significant correlation with invasive species distribution for temperature anomaly (r2 = 0.73, AIC= 2206) and precipitation anomaly (r2 = 0.74, AIC= 2221), while OLS model did not offer a good correlation (r2 < 0.001, AIC > 2400) compared to GWR. Combination of temperature and precipitation anomaly (shared model) showed an improved spatial correlation (r2 > 0.75) using GWR. Variation partitioning revealed the dominant influence (> 0.40 of variation) of temperature anomaly over Deccan Peninsula, Himalaya and North East zone. Influence of precipitation anomaly was more prominent over arid and semi-arid zone explaining > 0.35 of variation. Results revealed the strength of GWR to see the interaction of invasive plant species w.r.t. climate anomalies that explain the influence of spatial variation due to heterogeneity at varying neighbour distances. The significant correlation of invasive species with both the anomalies revealed the affinity of invasive species towards warmer, drier and wet places. This gives an indication that the distribution of invasive species could be triggered by climate anomaly. The use of other predictor variables (i.e. edaphic and anthropogenic) could be an inclusive input in a future perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing rainfall patterns have significant effect on water resources, agriculture output in many countries, especially the country like India where the economy depends on rain-fed agriculture. Rainfall over India has large spatial as well as temporal variability. To understand the variability in rainfall, spatial-temporal analyses of rainfall have been studied by using 107 (1901-2007) years of daily gridded India Meteorological Department (IMD) rainfall datasets. Further, the validation of IMD precipitation data is carried out with different observational and different reanalysis datasets during the period from 1989 to 2007. The Global Precipitation Climatology Project data shows similar features as that of IMD with high degree of comparison, whereas Asian Precipitation-Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation data show similar features but with large differences, especially over northwest, west coast and western Himalayas. Spatially, large deviation is observed in the interior peninsula during the monsoon season with National Aeronautics Space Administration-Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (NASA-MERRA), pre-monsoon with Japanese 25 years Re Analysis (JRA-25), and post-monsoon with climate forecast system reanalysis (CFSR) reanalysis datasets. Among the reanalysis datasets, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) shows good comparison followed by CFSR, NASA-MERRA, and JRA-25. Further, for the first time, with high resolution and long-term IMD data, the spatial distribution of trends is estimated using robust regression analysis technique on the annual and seasonal rainfall data with respect to different regions of India. Significant positive and negative trends are noticed in the whole time series of data during the monsoon season. The northeast and west coast of the Indian region shows significant positive trends and negative trends over western Himalayas and north central Indian region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources in India are projected to face severe climate-induced stress. In the North-Eastern Hill region, where lifestyles are closely connected to nature, this holds great implications for human development. While scientific knowledge regarding climate change and water is growing at global and regional scales, an equally diverse body of knowledge on the human dimensions of the same at local levels is weak. This article attempts to bridge this knowledge gap by presenting micro-level evidence on the gendered impact of increasing water stress and the innovative gendered local adaptive strategies in this region. It urges for the need to re-think on adaptation planning, basing it on local templates for greater sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

India is a key actor in global climate governance, a result of its emissions profile, economic performance, and leadership role in the developing world. This article examines the new dynamics that are affecting the Indian position in global climate negotiations, which until recently has reflected a very traditional developing country position, tinged with neocolonial rhetoric. To analyze the Indian position in the era of thickening international legalization, the article considers the different basic views among the Indian policy-making elite. A significant national consensus exists on the notion that the developed countries have not “taken the lead” as was agreed in 1992 with the adoption of the U.N. Climate Change Convention. However, there is an intensive political debate in India revolving around the extent to which the country should take unilateral action on climate change and whether and how to link such measures to the international legalization process, as well as the respective role of per capita entitlements in the Indian international position. Influenced by international negotiations, the domestic policy dialogue is also shifting in India in important ways toward a more “internationalist” and proactive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Hydrological Sciences Journal/Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sontakke and Singh (The Holocene 6, 315-31, 1996) developed instrumental period summer monsoon(June-September total) rainfall series (1813-1995) for six homogeneous zones and all of India using 306 raingauge stations. This reconstruction has been revised and updated. Besides reconstructing backward and updating to 2005 the longest possible summer monsoon rainfall series (1813-2005), post-monsoon (October-December total) and annual rainfall series have also been developed for seven homogeneous zones: North Mountainous India (NMI), Northwest India (NWI), North Central India (NCI), Northeast India (NEI), West Peninsular India (WPI), East Peninsular India (EPI), South Peninsular India (SPI), and the whole country using data from 316 well-spread stations. The different series are reported here. The underlying mechanism of the possible cause of the recent decreasing trend in monsoon rainfall and increasing trend in post-monsoon rainfall is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]