A street vendor squatted on the sidewalk, struggling to catch his breath. A construction worker was moving slowly, careful not to faint. The painter was ill at home, losing several daily wages.
I met them all during a reportage trip to India in the summer of 2018. I had gone to report on the effects of the warming planet on what would soon be the most densely populated country in the world. I have learned that extreme heat is destroying the health and livelihoods of the working poor in India. And if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, according to scientific models, then the combination of heat and humidity can be literally unbearable.
Since then, India has witnessed unusual temperature spikes almost every year. This year, however, the heat is relentless in much of the country and raises an urgent question: is it possible to protect people at all for the future of such extreme heat?
Parts of northern and central India recorded their highest average temperatures in April.
For more than a month, temperatures have risen and remained there in much of the country (and neighboring Pakistan). The capital, Delhi, reached 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit) last week. West Bengal, in the dark east of my family’s country, is one of those regions where the combination of heat and humidity can rise to a point where the human body is actually at risk of cooking. This theoretical limit is the temperature of a “wet bulb” – when the thermometer is wrapped in a wet cloth, taking into account both heat and humidity – from 35 degrees Celsius.
In neighboring Pakistan, the meteorological department warned last week that daily high temperatures were 5 to 8 degrees Celsius above normal and that in mountainous north, melting snow and ice could cause glacial lakes to burst.
How much of this extreme heat can be blamed for climate change? This is already becoming an “obsolete issue,” said Frederic Otto, a leader in the science of attributing extreme weather events to climate change, in a post released Monday. Rising global average temperatures have already exacerbated heat waves “many times faster than any other type of extreme weather,” the document concluded. Get used to the extremes. Adapt. As much as possible.
I asked Roxy Matthew Cole, a climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, what worried him most. The failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing rising temperatures, he said.
“We need urgent action. At the local level, climate action and adaptation are likely to go hand in hand with global and national mitigation, “he said.
Pune is not as hot as some of the other cities in India. However, Kohl’s son returned from school with symptoms of heat stroke a few weeks ago. This led Cole to persuade the school to let the children go home earlier to avoid peak temperatures.
It’s just a school, he said. There needs to be broader government policies to guide schools and jobs across the country on what to do in the event of extreme temperatures. “We have enough data,” he said. “Estimates show that these heat waves will increase further in frequency and intensity, so we must act immediately to formulate these policies. India needs a long-term vision. “
The good news is that the temperature forecast has improved. People pay attention to early warnings. Heat-related mortality has decreased, he said. But human suffering is not like that.
Last week, my colleagues Harry Kumar and Mike Ives described the cascading effects of the heat. The wheat crop is damaged. Demand for electricity has risen, and so has demand for coal. India stopped passenger trains last week to free up coal-fired railways to reach coal-fired power plants. Politicians were arguing over who was to blame for the lack of supply.
Recently, the dump in the capital caught fire, sending harmful fumes into the foggy sky.
10-year-old Indian climate activist Licipriya Kangudjam told me on Tuesday that some days she doesn’t even go to school. There are power outages throughout the day, so the fans go out. Next is the trip home in the stuffy bus. Outdoor play is impossible. “It’s very difficult. I’m dehydrated all the time, which leads to dizziness,” she said.
Her voice rose. This is after two years forced to stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic. “We are finally back in school. “Rising temperatures are now a new threat,” she said.
Over the weekend, a cartographer visualizes the scale of human suffering. He created a map of the most densely populated cities in the world and colored them in shades of orange and red, based on their air temperature. India is dotted with the largest and darkest red circles:
I asked map maker Joshua Stevens, a leading cartographer at NASA Earth, how many people are potentially exposed. He collected the numbers and sent me a message on Twitter this morning: approximately 99 million people live in India’s 10 hottest cities.
What India is seeing now comes as average temperatures there have risen by about 1 degree Celsius or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the industrial era, according to an analysis by Berkeley Earth.
This is not what India does. Atmospheric emissions today come largely from the United States and Europe – and more from China over the past 40 years.
But how the global emissions curve goes depends significantly on how India grows. Its economy is among the largest in the world, and in a few years India’s population is expected to be the largest. Its emissions will certainly increase, but how fast and how much it will depend depends on how quickly India can give up burning coal.
At the current trajectory, the average temperature in India is expected to rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. This will certainly lead to more and worse heat spikes.
Global warming is a truly global problem. But the poorest and weakest in India will certainly pay a very high price.
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Before you go: The high fashion of the city dump
It’s time for a confession for Veronica Highland, director of fashion at Elle magazine. When she was a young fashion editor in New York, she wrote, her favorite shopping secret was a landfill in a small town in Massachusetts that occasionally uncovered treasures, including a 1970s Gucci scarf, sky blue clogs and a Ferragamo bag. . Highland used to be ashamed to talk about it, but today, at a time when luxury and fashion brands are forced to think of ways to save unsold or recycled goods, she decided it was time to clean up.
Thanks for reading. We will be back on Friday.
Manuela Andreoni, Claire O’Neill and Jesse Pesta contributed to Climate Forward.
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