The intense heat in India and Pakistan has forced people to gasp for air and forced India to abandon its policy of reducing coal imports to prevent further power outages.
With rising temperatures in India, electricity demand reached record highs in April, with the rise in air conditioning use causing the worst electricity crisis in more than six years.
Electricity requirements have forced India to return to a policy of reducing coal imports. Coal combustion generates about 60-70% of electricity.
The world’s second-largest coal user expected to phase out the dirtiest fossil fuel after the COP26 climate conference pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2070.
But the federal government has asked public and private utilities to supply 19 million tonnes of coal from abroad by the end of June, Reuters reported, in order to avoid further power outages as a matter of urgency.
“Panting” for air
Extreme heat hit large areas of the two countries last week and follows the hottest March since India’s Meteorological Department (IMD) began recording 122 years ago.
In April, northwestern and central India recorded average maximum temperatures of 35.9C (96.6F) and 37.78C (100F), said the director general of the Indian Meteorological Department, and mercury rose to 40C (104F) in the New Delhi capital for several days.
Pakistan has issued a heat warning after the hottest March in 61 years.
High temperatures are expected to continue in May.
For the first time in decades, the country has gone from winter to summer without a spring season, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman said over the weekend.
“South Asia, especially India and Pakistan, is facing a record heat wave. It started in early April and continues to let people gasp in whatever shade they find, “she said in a statement.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also warned of the impact of high temperatures and the growing risk of fires.
Image: A man chills in Peshawar, Pakistan
Contributing to climate change
Researchers have warned that more than a billion people are at risk from heat-related effects in the region, linking the early start of an intense summer to climate change.
In February, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of India’s vulnerability to extreme heat.
With warming at 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial temperatures, the capital of West Bengal, Kolkata, can once a year see conditions corresponding to those of the 2015 heat wave, when temperatures reached 44 ° C (111.2F) and thousands died across the country, the report said.
With summer temperatures in April and May, cooling monsoon rains are expected to arrive in June.
Image: Man breaks a block of ice to distribute it among residents of part of Ahmedabad, India
Real danger of high temperatures and high humidity
While heat risks life and livelihoods in India, an additional danger is when high temperatures are mixed with high humidity, which makes it difficult for people to cool down by sweating.
Such conditions are measured by “wet bulb temperatures”, which record the readings of a thermometer wrapped in a wet cloth.
The high temperatures of the wet bulb thermometer are particularly important in India, where most of the country’s 1.4 billion people live in rural areas without access to air conditioners or refrigeration plants.
Sudden floods of melting glaciers
Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Climate Change also said the government had told provincial disaster management authorities to prepare urgently for the risk of flash floods in the northern mountainous provinces due to the rapid melting of glaciers.
Glaciers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges have melted rapidly, creating thousands of glacial lakes in northern Pakistan, about 30 of which are at risk of sudden dangerous floods, the climate change ministry said.
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