This story originally appeared in Grinding and is part of climatic table collaboration.
A year ago, Extreme heat waves in India it killed dozens of people, reduced crop yields by up to a third in some areas and set fire to a dumpsite in Delhi, spewing toxic smoke over surrounding neighbourhoods. Temperatures soared 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, reaching 115 degrees in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and sparking more than 300 wildfires across the country. Even as power plants burned more coal to provide the energy needed to keep people cool, the country experienced a nationwide electricity shortage.
Such scenes will become the norm as extreme heat, driven by climate change, kill crops, start fires and endanger the health of people around the world. New research suggests that India is especially at risk, and the government may be underestimating the threat.
There are about 1.4 billion people in India, and extreme heat last year left 90 percent of the country vulnerable to public health risks such as heat stroke, food shortages and even death, according to a study. study Cambridge researchers published on April 19. High temperatures could also slow down the country’s economy and hamper its development goals, the researchers found.
Heat waves are causing “unprecedented burdens on public health, agriculture, and other socioeconomic and cultural systems,” they wrote. “India is currently facing a collision of multiple cumulative climate hazards.”
But government officials have underestimated the danger, the study found. Officials rely on a climate vulnerability assessment, designed by India’s Department of Science and Technology, indicating that a smaller percentage of the country faces high risk from climate change than the new findings suggest. Such a miscalculation could hamper India’s efforts to meet United Nations sustainable development goals such as reducing hunger and poverty and achieving gender equality.
The study appeared in PLOS Climate just days after at least 13 people died of heat stroke and several dozen were hospitalized after an outdoor event in the western state of Maharashtra. Heat wave last week in other regions of the country forced school closures as daytime temperatures topped 104 degrees Fahrenheit several days in a row.
At least 24,000 people have died from heat in India in the last 30 years. Climate change has triggered heat waves there and in neighboring Pakistan until 100 times more likely, and temperatures are expected to break records every three years, something that would happen only once every 312 years if the climate were not undergoing such radical changes.
“Long-term projections indicate that Indian heat waves could cross the survival limit of a healthy human resting in the shade by 2050,” the authors of the Cambridge study wrote.
With more than 1.4 billion people, India is on track to overtake China as the world’s most populous country this year. As the nation’s heat death count rises, its economy will slow, the researchers project. By 2030, intense heat will reduce outdoor work capacity by 15 percent, in a country where, by an estimate, “hot work” employs 75 percent of the workforce. Heat waves could cost India 8.7 percent of its GDP by the end of the century, the Cambridge researchers wrote.
However, the government’s climate vulnerability assessment does not take into account the most intense and long-lasting heat waves, according to the study. The Cambridge researchers found that all of Delhi, home to 32 million people, is threatened by severe heatwaves, but the government says only two of the city’s 11 districts face high climate risk. Overcrowding, lack of access to electricity, water, sanitation and medical care, coupled with poor housing conditions, could leave Delhi residents, particularly low-income ones, even more vulnerable to heat. , the study authors wrote, noting the need for “structural interventions.”
The government “has not understood the importance of heat and how heat can kill,” Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Gujarat-based Indian Institute of Public Health, he told the bbc.
Meanwhile, India’s Ministry of Energy has called on coal-fired power plants to ramp up output to meet demand for electricity, which hit a record high earlier this month as temperatures eclipsed 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
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