The high density in cities of buildings, asphalt and concrete, and the absence of vegetation creates extra-sweltering “heat islands”
of May in Delhi is a riot of colour. Red and yellow blossoms line the streets. But this year, no one is stopping to see the flowers. Almost everyone who can be is inside, parked in front of an air-conditioner or fan. For weeks India has been in the grip of a punishing heatwave. On 30th April, temperatures in the capital reached 43.5°C for the third day in a row. The heat has come unusually early, with the hottest March since records began in 1901.
Heatwaves around the world have been made more common and hotter because of climate change, according to Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Oxford University. They will continue to get hotter until humans stop burning fossil fuels, Ms Otto adds. The world is on average 1.1-1.3°C warmer than in pre-industrial times, and the number of heatwave days India experiences has also increased—from 413 in the decade to 1990 to 600 in the decade to 2020.
Cities must prepare properly. In India, Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, is best equipped. In 2010 an unusually severe heat wave killed an estimated 1,344 people in the city. Officials drew up a “heat action plan”—the first in—which launched in 2013 and has been updated frequently. An early-warning system alerts residents to coming heatwaves and tells health workers to prepare for an increase in admissions.
One study suggests that the plan prevented around 2,400 deaths in the summers of 2014 and 2015 when there were several severe heatwaves. Several other Indian cities have since created their own plans at the behest of the national government. Improvements are often hampered by a lack of resources and the difficulty of getting different departments to work together.
Heatwaves will keep getting more severe and harder to adapt to unless greenhouse-gas emissions reach net zero globally. But even if that happens people in countries like India and Pakistan will probably have to spend less time outside on the hottest days in decades to come. On May 1st Chennai, a city on the east coast, had a “wet-bulb” temperature of more than 32°C, the point at which it becomes difficult for people to cool down by sweating and physical labour becomes dangerous.
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