Scientists have noticed an alarming rise in surface water temperatures in the highly eco-sensitive Sundarbans delta over the past three decades, a phenomenon they attribute to climate change. "Specifically, the temperature in these waters has risen at the rate of 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade, much higher than that observed globally or for the Indian Ocean,” marine scientists Abhijit Mitra and Avijit Gangopadhyay said.
The signal of global warming has already been transmitted to the mangrove—dominated Indian Sundarbans. The surface water temperatures in both the sectors have shown significant rising trends, for both pre-monsoon and monsoon periods, they said.
Quantitatively, surface water temperatures in the Sundarbans have risen by 6.14 per cent in the western sector and by 6.12 per cent in the eastern sector over the past 27 years, at a rate of approximately 0.05 degrees Celsius every year, Mitra, a senior scientist at Calcutta University’s Department of Marine Science, said.
“This rate is, in fact, much higher than the observed and documented warming trends in the tropical Pacific Ocean (0.01- 0.015 degrees Celsius per year), tropical Atlantic Ocean (0.01- 0.02 degrees Celsius per year) and the planet itself (0.006 degrees Celsius per year),” they said reporting the findings in latest issue of Current Science.
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