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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian: news website of the year
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Show captionA man walks across a dried bed of the Yamuna River in New Delhi,
India. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP
Pakistan


‘WE ARE LIVING IN HELL’: PAKISTAN AND INDIA SUFFER EXTREME SPRING HEATWAVES

April temperatures at unprecedented levels have led to critical water and
electricity shortages

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi and Shah Meer Baloch in Islamabad
Mon 2 May 2022 11.07 EDT
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For the past few weeks, Nazeer Ahmed has been living in one of the hottest
places on Earth. As a brutal heatwave has swept across India and Pakistan, his
home in Turbat, in Pakistan’s Balochistan region, has been suffering through
weeks of temperatures that have repeatedly hit almost 50C (122F), unprecedented
for this time of year. Locals have been driven into their homes, unable to work
except during the cooler night hours, and are facing critical shortages of water
and power.

Ahmed fears that things are only about to get worse. It was here, in 2021, that
the world’s highest temperature for May was recorded, a staggering 54C. This
year, he said, feels even hotter. “Last week was insanely hot in Turbat. It did
not feel like April,” he said.

As the heatwave has exacerbated massive energy shortages across India and
Pakistan, Turbat, a city of about 200,000 residents, now barely receives any
electricity, with up to nine hours of load shedding every day, meaning that air
conditioners and refrigerators cannot function. “We are living in hell,” said
Ahmed.

Show more

It has been a similar story across the subcontinent, where the realities of
climate change are being felt by more than 1.5 billion people as the scorching
summer temperatures have arrived two months early and the relief of the monsoons
are months away. North-west and central India experienced the hottest April in
122 years, while Jacobabad, a city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, hit 49C on
Saturday, one of the highest April temperatures ever recorded in the world.

The heatwave has already had a devastating impact on crops, including wheat and
various fruits and vegetables. In India, the yield from wheat crops has dropped
by up to 50% in some of the areas worst hit by the extreme temperatures,
worsening fears of global shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
which has already had a devastating impact on supplies.



In Balochistan’s Mastung district, known for its apple and peach orchards, the
harvests have been decimated. Haji Ghulam Sarwar Shahwani, a farmer, watched in
anguish as his apple trees blossomed more than a month early, and then despair
as the blossom sizzled and then died in the unseasonal dry heat, almost killing
off his entire crop. Farmers in the area also spoke of a “drastic” impact on
their wheat crops, while the area has also recently been subjected to 18-hour
power cuts.

“This is the first time the weather has wreaked such havoc on our crops in this
area,” Shahwani said. “We don’t know what to do and there is no government help.
The cultivation has decreased; now very few fruits grow. Farmers have lost
billions because of this weather. We are suffering and we can’t afford it.”

A man throws water on his face to cool off in Islamabad, Pakistan, last month.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate, told the Guardian that the
country was facing an “existential crisis” as climate emergencies were being
felt from the north to south of the country.

Rehman warned that the heatwave was causing the glaciers in the north of the
country to melt at an unprecedented rate, and that thousands were at risk of
being caught in flood bursts. She also said that the sizzling temperatures were
not only impacting crops but water supply as well. “The water reservoirs dry up.
Our big dams are at dead level right now, and sources of water are scarce,” she
said.



Rehman said the heatwave should be a wake-up call to the international
community. “Climate and weather events are here to stay and will in fact only
accelerate in their scale and intensity if global leaders don’t act now,” she
said.

Experts said the scorching heat being felt across the subcontinent was likely a
taste of things to come as global heating continues to accelerate. Abhiyant
Tiwari, an assistant professorand programme manager at the Gujarat Institute of
Disaster Management, said “the extreme, frequent, and long-lasting spells of
heatwaves are no more a future risk. It is already here and is unavoidable.”

The World Meteorological Organisation said in a statement that the temperatures
in India and Pakistan were “consistent with what we expect in a changing
climate. Heatwaves are more frequent and more intense and starting earlier than
in the past.”

A heatwave is declared when the maximum temperature is over 40C and at least
4.5C above normal.

> #Pakistan soared up to a scorching 49C (120.2F) today.
> 
> That's one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth in April.
> pic.twitter.com/AnIxNnjfwU
> 
> — US StormWatch (@US_Stormwatch) May 1, 2022

Over the weekend in India, Bikaner was the hottest place in the country at
47.1C, according to the India Meteorological Department. However, in some parts
of north-west India, images captured by satellites showed that surface land
temperatures had exceeded 60C – unprecedented for this time of year when usual
surface temperatures are between 45 and 55C.



“The hottest temperatures recorded are south-east and south-west of Ahmedabad,
with maximum land-surface temperatures of around 65C,” the European Space Agency
said on its website.

The high temperatures have put massive pressure on power demand in both India
and Pakistan, where people have had to endure hours of power cuts amid the
crippling heat. On Friday, the peak power demand in India touched an all-time
high of 207,111MW, according to the government.

India is facing its worst electricity shortage in six decades. Power cuts
lasting upwards of eight hours have been imposed in states including Jharkhand,
Haryana, Bihar, Punjab and Maharashtra as domestic coal supplies have fallen to
critical levels and the price of imported coal has soared. In a bid to speed up
the transport of coal across the country, Indian Railways cancelled more than
600 passenger and postal train journeys to make way for transportation of coal
to power plants.


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 * South and central Asia
 * Extreme weather
 * India
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