This is India in 2022, as the extreme heat intensified by climate change threatens lives and crops and the country prepares for higher temperatures and more blisters in the coming days. “It’s really unbearable,” said Arpita Mondal, a hydroclimatologist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. “It’s so hot and humid that even if you do nothing, just sit somewhere under the fan or AC, it’s also tedious – it’s so bad.” Those who have no choice but to go out to work because they are paid part-time, have it much worse. Prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures such as those recorded in India this week poses significant health risks. “It can be fatal for some,” said Dr Mondal. A rikshaw extractor is waiting for a warm afternoon in Kolkata, in eastern India on April 19. (EPA) More than a billion people are at risk for heat-related health effects, scientists say. Temperatures have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in the Indian capital New Delhi and are forecast to remain at around 44 degrees Celsius until Sunday, with the summer heat not yet reaching before the cold monsoon rains reach the end of June or July. On the border with Pakistan, temperatures in the Dandu region reached 47.5 degrees on Thursday and the mercury is forecast to approach 50 degrees Celsius this weekend in parts of the country. “Temperatures are rising rapidly,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told heads of state at an online conference on Wednesday. “And I get up much earlier than usual.” Mr Monti also warned that the country was already seeing an increase in fires, including in hospitals, in recent days. Dozens of people die every year in fires in hospitals and factories in India, mainly due to illegal construction and loose safety standards, according to the news agency. The heatwave that covers India stands out for two reasons, according to Dr. Mondal. The first is that it struck early. The main summer months of India – April, May and June – are always incredibly hot in most parts of the country before monsoon rains bring lower temperatures. But this year, India recorded the warmest March on record since India’s Meteorological Department began monitoring 122 years ago. An elephant cools off at a zoo in Karachi, Pakistan on March 31. (EPA) The second is that it affects the majority of the country, instead of the usual hotspots that are the north-central, northwestern region that includes Rajasthan and the southeast, including Andhra Pradesh, he said. This year, most of India’s 1.4 billion people, except perhaps those in the highlands, are suffering from the heat, he added. It is too early for scientists to measure the extent to which this heatwave has been fueled by climate change. However, climate scientists have warned that heat waves are increasing in intensity and frequency in India and around the world due to global warming, which is mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The United Nations climate change report released last August said: “It is almost certain that hot extremes (including heat waves) have become more frequent and intense in most land areas since the 1950s.” The report said it had “high confidence” that man-made climate change was the main driver of such change. A woman uses her bag to protect herself from the sun in New Delhi on Wednesday. (REUTERS) “Every heat wave that is happening today has become more likely and more intense due to climate change,” said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “Heat waves are where climate change really changes the game and are the deadliest extremes there are.” In India, heat waves have arrived early and have become particularly intense in the last decade, killing hundreds of people each year. Francesco Tamilia, a policy analyst who recently worked on a report investigating the effects of climate change on heat waves and the effects on human health, said in addition to causing heat stroke, when the body can not regulate its temperature and deterioration cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, there were indications that excessive heat could contribute to premature births, low birth weight and increased risk of stillbirth. It also affects mental health, he said, with rising temperatures linked to rising suicide rates, according to a study. Excessive heat can also have a negative impact on the economy and is associated with low productivity as it becomes too hot for some people to work, said Mr Tamilia, who works at Public Policy Projects, an independent policy institute. High temperatures are already hurting wheat yields, leaving crops shrinking, according to local reports. This concerns the consideration of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is already threatens global wheat supply. There are, however, some adaptation success stories. Firefighters in Delhi are taking a break to put out a blaze at the Bhalswa landfill in New Delhi on Wednesday. (AP) Dr. Mondal pointed to an initiative in the city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat that had replaced aluminum roofs in the city’s slums with fiber and cardboard roofs that would be cooler. However, many climate scientists and weather observers have pointed out that the heatwave was just another example of how those who contributed little to global warming suffered from its effects. “What about those who do not have enough clean water to drink, resources to cool their homes or jobs that allow them to live indoors,” Chandni Singh, an environmental social scientist at the Indian Institute for Human Plants, tweeted. in Bangalore. “It is a profound climate injustice that those who face the greatest weight of the current heatwave have contributed so little to the problem.” “As a climate scientist, the question that concerns me is where are we going from here?” Aditi Mukherji, a researcher on climate change adaptation at the International Water Management Institute, said she could not understand why high emissions do not reduce their emissions fast enough. “How do you adapt to such extreme heat? “You just can not,” he wrote on Twitter. “Mitigation is the best adjustment.”
