Panaji, July 15 (IANS) Global warming has not only increased the number of cyclones in the Arabian sea but has also intensified them, a marine scientist attached to the National Institute of Oceanography said here Wednesday.
Prasanna Kumar, a senior marine scientist, said there had been virtually a five-fold increase in the number of cyclones in the Arabian sea in the last 12 years.

“The 1995-2007 period has seen five times the number of cyclones than in the previous 25 years from 1970 to 1995,” Kumar said.

The scientist, who co-authored a paper titled “Response of the Arabian Sea to global warming and associated regional climate shift”, published in the Marine Environmental Research journal, said they had measured cyclones designated as “most intense” with speeds of 100 km per hour in the Arabian Sea.

Global warming, he said, did not bode well for the inhabitants of the western coast of India.

“We are already aware of a climatic shift, with winters getting progressively warmer and rainfall seeing a continual decline,” Kumar said, adding that these environmental changes would also affect the region’s food security.

“Warm winters have already affected the production of wheat in the last decade and a half. We will also see waning in the green cover in India, due to increased occurrence of heat spells,” he said.