One in two Indians believes that human-made climate change is the primary cause of increased severe weather events that the world experiences today as compared to 23 per cent of the US general population, an online survey carried out for IBM has shown.

The survey was conducted nearly a month ago by Morning Consult through online interviews of 4,816 people — 2,000 adults each in India and the US apart from 400 Indian business leaders and their 195 US counterparts.

The survey results that compare climate change perceptions of people in the two countries were unveiled as The Weather Company, an IBM business, formally rolled out its Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System (IBM-GRAF) here.

Weather and economy

The share of senior business leaders who think that climate change is impacting their business is much greater in India as compared to in the US. While more than three-fourths of senior business decision makers in India felt that a severe weather event disrupted their business in the past year, only 47 per cent US senior business leaders felt so. As many as 62 per cent members of Indian business community were “extremely concerned” about the climate change having an impact on their business over the next several years, only one in five US businessmen seemed to be worried about the same. As against 36 per cent of the US general population, twice as many Indians felt that their local economy is impacted by a severe weather event in the last one year.

The survey also showed that those in India are nearly twice as likely than those in the US who state they are not confident of their local weather forecasts. “As weather conditions become increasingly more severe across the globe, it’s crucial that businesses across India have access to timely and accurate weather to help stay prepared,” said Cameron Clayton, General Manager IBM Watson Media and Weather.

How is IBM-GRAF superior

According to him, IBM-GRAF runs on an IBM Power Systems supercomputer and can predict conditions up to 12 hours in advance with detail and frequency previously unavailable at this global scale. Compared to current global weather models that cover nearly 12 km currently and updated every six hours, IBM-GRAF narrows down the area to 3 km and is updated hourly.

Apart from farmers, many industries including aviation, logistics, insurance and energy companies will benefit immensely from more accurate weather forecasts,” said Clayton.

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