Global warming made killer heatwaves in India, Pakistan 30 times more likely: Report
The region is warming up at an alarming pace
Climate change has rendered the blistering heatwave that has gripped South Asia in recent days 30 times more likely, according to a report.
The rapid-response report, which quantified the influence of global warming on extreme weather events, said that before the advent of human-caused climate changesuch an event would occur after roughly 3000 years.
According to the report, the record length of the heatwave, which witnessed power disruptions as temperatures reached the high 40s, indicates that climate-vulnerable countries are racing against the clock to prepare for a climate-addled future.
Watch |Alarming report on South Asia Heatwave: 'Extreme weather due to climate change'
Friederike Otto, the report's principal author and a scientist at Imperial College London's Grantham Institute, told AFP that global warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius has lowered the so-called return period of extreme heat from 3000 years to once a century.
As the earth warms, the time between deadly waves will become much shorter."A heatwave like this one would be expected as often as once every five years" if Earth's average surface temperature rises another four-fifths of a degree to 2C above preindustrial levels, found Otto and her team.
A world warmed by two degrees Celsius or a 2C world is an unsettlingly plausible scenario. Even if we were to fulfilexisting national commitments to reduce carbon pollution under the Paris Agreement, wewould still see aglobal warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius.
Pakistan and India saw the hottest March-April period on record.
It would take months to calculate the toll of this heatwave in terms of lives lost, economic damage, hospitalisation, lost pay, and so on.
However, among the first visible effects of the heatwave was the transformation of a bountiful wheat crop in India into an agricultural disaster. As a result, the country has blocked the export of millions of tonnes.
This pushed up worldwide prices dramatically in a market already crippled by the hampered exports fromwar-torn Ukraine.
More than 90 deaths have been directly linked to the heatwave thus far. However, if recent hot spells are any indication, the number will be much greater, possibly in the thousands.
(With inputs from agencies)
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