Sri Lanka - Climate Change
Climate change involves long-term slow changes in climate, short-term annual climatic variability and unpredictable extreme climatic events. Climate change is expected to impact agriculture, water resources, energy, enviornment and fisheries. Sri Lanka will be involved in the global effort to minimize greenhouse gas emissions within the framework of sustainable development and principles protected by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Due to being an island vulnerable to climate change impacts and extreme weather events, these weather changes are likely to impact socio-economic activities in the country. The National Climate Change Policy of Sri Lanka was developed to provide guidance and direction for all stakeholders to address the adverse impacts of climate change efficiently and effectively.
Sri Lanka is an island nation surrounded by a low-lying coastal belt. Around a third of the country’s population lives in the coastal belt. The impact of climate change on sea level rise and ocean warming are crucial for Sri Lanka in several aspects. Being an island, sea level rise will pose many challenges to coastal communities, their livelihoods, and coastal ecosystems. With this rise, coastal systems and low-lying areas will experience adverse impacts such as submergence, coastal flooding, saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion.
The country has recently experienced outbreak of diseases those are closely connected with environment and weather patterns, and seasonal outbreaks of dengue are a prime example of this. Spread of vector borne diseases into new areas with changing patterns of local climate is a potential health hazard that needs to be allocated close attention. Sri Lanka has a history of such epidemics in the past such as periodic outbreaks of malaria. In addition, extreme weather conditions can lead to disasters causing injuries and fatalities.
Sri Lanka as an agriculture based country faces greater consequences of extreme weather events due to temperature rise in the dry zone, and higher precipitation in the wet zone and changing of seasonal rainfall pattern on both zones, dry and wet zones. Livelihood systems already vulnerable to food security face immediate risk of increased crop failure, net pattern of pests and diseases, lack of appropriate seeds and planting materials and loss of livestock.
Coastal communities depending on fisheries and fish farmers who are involved in aquaculture are already profoundly affected by climate change; rising sea levels, ocean acidification and floods are among impacts of climate change. Climate change is modifying the distribution and productivity of marine and fresh water species and is already affecting biological processes and altering food webs. The consequences felt on sustainability of aquatic ecosystem for fisheries and aquaculture is highly adverse.
Drought is a slow-onset disaster that results from weather causing a shortage in precipitation over one or more seasons, and it is not the same as a permanent arid climate. Due to its range of causes and effects, drought is one of the most complex natural disaster hazards and its slow-onset nature makes it difficult to tell when a drought is starting and when it has ended. Additionally, drought effects build up over time, so an accumulation of impacts can last for years after the actual drought event has ended.
Sri Lanka has been subjected to drought over the course of its long history. The commonality of this hazard in Sri Lanka is notable as the Disaster Management Act No. 13, 2005 recognized drought “as the most frequent natural disaster out of its 21 natural or man-made disasters.”
Sri Lanka has four physical features that affect rainfall in the country: it is a small island in the tropical Indian Ocean, it is close to the equator, it has a large group of hills in the middle of the island that acts as a barrier to monsoons, and the massive Indian subcontinent is in close proximity to the northwest. These physical characteristics lead to drought when combined with three weather con- ditions: northern high pressure systems coming to Sri Lanka from across the dry Indian subcontinent during the Northeast monsoon season of December to February; a decrease in tropical depressions and storms in the Bay of Bengal in the October to January timeframe; and dry air in the May to September monsoon air streams because of deviations from the normal air flow direction.
Sri Lanka is positioned on the western side of the Bay of Bengal, which is an active, albeit not highly active, region for cyclones. The Bay of Bengal has an average of 4 to 6 cyclones per year out of an average of 80 such storms across the globe. Even considering that number of annual storms in the Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka is rarely a target of cyclones and has only been hit by 19 cyclonic storms in the past 130 years.
Historically, the Bay of Bengal has two storm cycles in a year, with peaks in May and November. October to December has been by far the more active and destructive of the two cycles for Sri Lanka, and this is the time of year that more and stronger storms hit Sri Lanka. The cyclones that hit Sri Lanka almost always hit the east coast of the island first and then move across the country toward the west or the north. Sri Lanka is also affected by the winds and storm surges of cyclones that pass near the island.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
