In India, “Horrid” Heat Wave June 6, 2019

A stunning heat event in Asia that most Americans know nothing about.

I interviewed veteran Journalist Keith Schneider last summer after he had just returned from an extended visit to Asia, and India.

Washington Post:

NEW DELHI — When the temperature topped 120 degrees (49 Celsius), residents of the northern Indian city of Churu stopped going outside and authorities started hosing down the baking streets with water. Churu — home to more than 100,000 people — has been the hottest place in India in recent days, part of a summer heat wave suffocating most of the country as temperatures rise above normal even for this sweltering time of year. According to weather website El Dorado on Wednesday, five of the hottest 15 places on the planet over the previous 24 hours were in India or neighboring Pakistan. In Churu, the mercury hit 118 degrees, down from 122 degrees on Monday. That temperature is just shy of India’s all-time high, recorded in 2016.

Nearly the whole country remained under a heat-wave warning Wednesday, with severe warnings for a swath of north and central India, including the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Earlier this week, the Health Ministry issued an advisory with do’s and don’ts for staying safe in rising temperatures. They included avoiding the sun between noon and 3 p.m. and refraining from drinking alcohol, tea and coffee. The National Disaster Management Authority weighed in with its own tips: Cover your head, cross-ventilate your room and try sleeping under a slightly wet sheet.

The heat wave is part of a trend of rising temperatures in India. Last year was the sixth-warmest since national record-keeping began in 1901; 11 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2004. The frequency of heat waves is also increasing, a government minister told India’s Parliament earlier this year. That adds up to a huge policy challenge, noted Hem Dholakia, an environmental researcher, in a piece published last month. “Science as well as our subjective experiences has made it unequivocally clear that longer, hotter and deadlier summers are poised to become the norm due to climate change,” he wrote. Every Indian city needs a plan for combating extreme heat, he said.

Not normal…and the attribution studies solidly confirm influence of climate change on contemporary heat waves, see the National Academies Attribution Studies report https://t.co/j4MmVFxYnb — Marshall Shepherd (@DrShepherd2013) June 6, 2019