An extreme heat wave in India and Pakistan collapses the power supply – power plants can only run “less than a day”.
New Delhi – “The situation across India is devastating,” said Arvind Kejriwal of the regional government of the capital region. He warned of the potentially dramatic effects of ongoing power outages in New Delhi’s hospitals and subway.
While extreme heat is generally not uncommon in South Asia, it is hitting the region much earlier than usual. Hundreds of millions are brooding in northern India and Pakistan amid heat unprecedented for April. The temperatures were already more than 45 degrees in many places and could exceed the 50 degree mark at the weekend, as a spokeswoman for the World Weather Organization (WMO) said.
Such high temperatures are usually only reached in May or June. The early heatwave is a warning sign of what’s to come in the summer, said Director Dileep Mavalankar of the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar. Northwest and central India experienced the hottest April since weather records began 122 years ago, said the head of the Indian weather agency. Science guides the increasing and more intense heat waves to climate change.
Heatwave in India and Pakistan: Record temperatures are ‘serious threats’
The heat is not expected to abate until the beginning of next week. Coupled with the high humidity in the region, there were sometimes conditions in which people reached their adaptation limits, said climate researcher Erich Fischer from Zurich to the Swiss broadcaster SRF.
The temperatures in Pakistan this week were also over 45 degrees. According to the Pakistani weather authority, 48 degrees were measured in rural Sindh. March of this year was the hottest since 1961.
Pakistan’s Climate Minister Sherry Rehman warned of “serious threats” to public health and agriculture from the “extreme temperatures this year”. The high temperatures are particularly dramatic for devout Muslims in the region refrain from eating and drinking during the day because of the fasting month of Ramadan.
India and Pakistan: Heat wave affects electricity supply
The extreme heat wave in India and Pakistan is increasingly causing the power supply in both countries to collapse. While power outages lasting up to eight hours were reported in some Pakistani cities, authorities in New Delhi warned on Friday (April 29) that they could only run many power plants for “less than a day”.
In the northern Indian states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, authorities ordered power cuts in factories to respond to high demand from air conditioners and fans. According to media reports, there were also bottlenecks in the supply of coal in electricity plants – the most important raw material for electricity production in India to date.
Around ten percent of the world’s population live in the region, which is one of the most densely populated in the world. People live close together, the air pollution is high, the nights are hot. Many people have no way to cool down. If the heat waves last longer, people without shelter in air-conditioned rooms will soon be unable to live there. Since 2010, more than 6,500 people have died in India from heat-related effects.
Heatwave in India and Pakistan: “Terrible weather in April”
“It’s the first time I’ve experienced such terrible weather in April,” said Somya Mehra, a 30-year-old housewife from New Delhi. “I’ve stopped sending my kid outside to play,” she said.
Amid the dangerous heatwave, India’s fire departments battled a major blaze at a landfill site in the capital, New Delhi. Around 30 firefighters were deployed to fight the fire that broke out three days ago. The fire had set a 60 meter high mountain of rubbish on fire. It is the fourth fire at a garbage dump in New Delhi within a month. Experts fear the unseasonably hot weather will fuel the decomposition of the garbage, releasing even more flammable methane gas.
The heat is having an impact on agriculture, among other things. The high temperatures also mean that those who can afford it tend to live indoors during the hottest hours of the day. They prefer to only be outside early in the morning or in the evening. Some try to find a cooler place in the mountains. (na/dpa/afp)
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