Visakhapatnam: The uprooted trees and the rise in temperature in the city are bringing back the memories of the devastating Hudhud cyclone in the minds of people. The cyclone hit the city on October 12 last year and it’s going to be almost a year, but its effect is still lingering on,
According to various sources, the maximum temperature of the city and in the airport area witnessed a deviation of about two degree Celsius from its normal average figure in the last months.
However, the local meteorological department claims that the impact of Hudhud on temperature cannot be assessed with the data of just a year.
“You can realise how the temperature and weather are changing post Hudhud. The summer continued for a long time and temperature is also fluctuating highly. The government should speed up plantation activity,” said Andhra University Environmental Science professor K. Kameswara Rao.
“It is a common phenomenon that loss of green cover will lead to temperature rise. The trees act as a carbon sink. The trees were absorbing the heat, but now due to their absence heat radiation has gone up, leading to a rise in temperature,” Mr Rao added.
The AP government had signed an agreement with World Bank for securing a credit of $250 million (Rs 1587 crore) for the AP Disaster Recovery Project to restore, improve and enhance the resilience of public services and livelihoods of communities affected by Hudhud in the state.
Among restoration acti-vities, erecting an ecological park at Kambalakonda and restoring lost shelter belts, windbreaks and mangroves along the coast and support livelihood opportunities of poor vulnerable coastal families by building nurseries that would supply saplings for farm forestry, were in plan. However, according to sources at the forest department, the project plan for the same had been sent to the government but was yet to be sanctioned.
