Last week 14 people in Mumbai died from an apparent heatstroke while attending an open-air event. This is possibly the biggest ever death toll related to heatwaves in a single instance. It brings back the spotlight on the potential risk of heatwaves whose frequency and intensity are expected to increase because of climate change.
According to the annual report, published on April 2023 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), climate change has contributed to its advance in 2022. Droughts, floods, and heatwaves have affected every continent. European glaciers are melting and Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record.
Global warming is leading to large-scale climate change. A large part of Asia has been hit hard by heat waves over the past two weeks. Scientists have already warned that 2023 could set new heat records as climatic patterns change and global warming accelerates.
According to the report from Axios, heat records have gone up throughout China, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand, as areas have surpassed 40 degrees Celsius. More than a dozen Chinese provinces broke new heat records. Six cities, in north and east India, recorded temperatures above 44°C while the capital Delhi recorded 40.4°C. Bangladesh endured power cuts as electricity demand surged in unusual conditions.
In recent years, India has become vulnerable to extreme heat. Experts said that it could be worse. The April heat waves have struck over some Indian states. The meteorological department of India issued an orange warning of the severe heatwave in some states of India such as Bihar Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh.
Last year, Pakistan and India experienced a shocking rise in temperature. India’s Meteorological Department said that globally, the years 2015-2022 were the eighth warmest on record, with extreme weather events, including heatwaves, despite the cooling impact of a La Niña event (the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific) for the past three years. Melting of glaciers and sea level rise, which reached record levels in 2022, are likely to reach new records in 2023 and the years after that.
Climate change has important consequences on the ecosystems and environment. For example, a recent assessment focusing on the unique high-elevation area around the Tibetan Plateau, the largest storehouse of snow and ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic, found that global warming is causing the temperate zone to expand.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service annual report, a large part of Europe and China have been gripped with heatwaves and droughts in 2022. Europe is experiencing its second warmest year on record and hottest ever summer.
The European Alps suffered a record loss of ice from glaciers due to a combination of little winter snow, an intrusion of Sahara Dust in March 2022, and heatwaves between May and early September.
In 2022, China experienced the hottest period since national records began, which extended from mid-June to the end of August, resulting in the hottest recorded temperature of more than 0.5°C. It was also the second driest summer on record.
There is a worldwide need to address the impact of heatwaves immediately. It could slow the process of achieving sustainable development goals.
