Heat waves in India and Pakistan are causing power and water cuts for millions of people | Global Warming

Last week, New Delhi’s temperature reached 46 degrees Celsius. Extreme heat has affected northwest and central India, according to the country’s meteorological department. A local shop owner told AFP that it was the “first time” she had ever been so hot in April.

In Rajasthan, in northwest India, it was Electricity has been cut off to factories to reduce consumption. According to local media, major power plants are facing a shortage of coal.

In addition to, 1.4 billion people suffer from a lack of water supply, which will get worse until the June-July rain forecast. Last Thursday (28), firefighters had to work to contain the blaze at huge landfills in the Indian capital.

• ‘I drink more than 5 liters of water a day’: How Indians survived their biggest heat wave in more than half a century

New Delhi, which has a population of more than 20 million people, does not have a modern infrastructure to process the 12,000 tons of waste it produces every day. In addition to last week’s fire, Three more have already been implemented in less than a month in the region.

In Pakistan, the heat wave has already reached 48 degrees Celsius.

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Society, temperatures are around 8 degrees above normal in some parts of the country. Farmers will have to manage the water supply – agriculture accounts for about 40% of the local population.

“Public health and agriculture in the country will face serious threats from extreme temperatures this year,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate change.

The Pakistan Meteorological Office had earlier stated that March was the warmest month on record since 1961.

Heat waves have killed more than 6,500 people in India since 2010. Scientists say that due to climate change, extreme events are becoming more frequent and intense – not only in the country, but across the planet.

“Climate change is making higher temperatures more likely in India,” said Maryam Zakaria of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

“Before human activities increased global temperatures, heat like the one that hit India earlier this month was only observed once every 50 years,” he added.

In August last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) He issued a report stating that what or what All regions of the world are already affected by extreme events such as heat wavesHeavy rains, droughts and tropical cyclones caused by global warming.

Furthermore, hundreds of scientists who signed the material claim that each of the past four decades has been Warmer in a row than in any other decade since 1850. Projections, according to the IPCC, are that the temperature will continue to rise until the middle of this century in all projected greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.