More than a billion people will be overheated – 10% of the world’s population, according to Scott Duncan, an extreme climate expert. This area, including New Delhi, could withstand temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius – which means temperatures above 110 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit are possible. And unfortunately, this heat does not sleep.
Extreme nighttime temperatures can be deadly
There will be little to no relief during the night, as minimum temperatures will not fall below 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in many areas. Prolonged periods of hot nights can be deadly as they limit the body’s ability to recover from the heat of the day. This is a major problem for the people of India, as much of them live without air conditioning, creating a life-threatening situation, especially for the elderly. Bahmer, a city in India, already recorded a high temperature of 45.1 degrees Celsius – 113 degrees Fahrenheit – on Tuesday. On the same day, a station in Pakistan set the record for the highest maximum temperature in the northern hemisphere at 116.6 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius), according to Maximiliano Herrera, an extreme climate expert.
The extremely stormy March breaks the temperature record of 122 years
Leading to the current extreme swelling, temperatures were consistently above average for March and April. The average maximum temperature for India as a whole recorded in March 2022 was the highest recorded in the last 122 years, according to the Meteorological Department of India (IMD). The average high temperature in March was 91.58 degrees Fahrenheit (33.10 degrees Celsius), just surpassing the previous record from 2010 of 91.56 degrees Fahrenheit (33.09 degrees Celsius). As of March 11, heat waves have affected 15 of India’s Indian states and territories, according to the Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), adding that “Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have suffered the most among the states, with 25 heat waves and heat days each during this period “. The pressure pattern associated with the La Niña conditions, which currently prevail in the Pacific, has been maintained longer than expected. This, along with warm waves coming from the Arctic, have caused heat waves to form, according to Raghu Murtugudde, a climate scientist at the University of Maryland. La Niña’s current impact on spring and summer in India is completely unexpected, Murtugudde added. April and May, known as the pre-monsoon period, are usually the hottest months of the year when the area cooks endlessly. This heat would continue to rise in the summer months if it were not for the cloud cover and rain provided by the monsoon season. Relief, though welcome, is slowly coming. The monsoon season, which brings the necessary rainfall and lower temperatures to India, generally begins in early June in the southern part of the country. However, it takes over a whole month to bring relief to places in northern India that are currently experiencing the worst heat wave. On the plus side, the models show that seasonal monsoon rainfall is likely to be 99% of what it normally is, according to the IMD. Monsoons are vital to the region because they provide much of the annual rainfall for India, aid irrigation for agriculture, and provide relief from strong heat waves in the pre-monsoon period.
India’s heat waves will get worse
As with many other extreme weather events, heat waves will become more and more severe as a result of climate change. “The future of heat waves looks even worse with significant mitigation of climate change and much worse without mitigation,” said Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of hydrology and climate at MIT. India is among the countries most expected to be affected by the effects of the climate crisis, according to the UN Climate Change Authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The latest state of the art report from the IPCC in August 2021, noted with “great confidence” that warm extremes have risen in South Asia and that those rising to extreme temperatures are attributed to man-made climate change. “More intense and more frequent heat waves are projected over India,” he said. Without any change, a potential humanitarian crisis could be raging across India, as large parts of the country could potentially become too hot to be inhabited.
