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Climate crisis: Global warming makes heat waves like those in India and Pakistan 30 times more likely

2022-05-24T08:53:28.727Z


One of the world's largest pine forests is burning in Pakistan. The extreme heat in South Asia is attributed to climate change. A specialist team has now checked the theory.


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Heat in India on May 20, 2022: Homeless people seek shade under an underpass in New Delhi

Photo: Manish Swarup / dpa

A fire broke out in one of the world's largest pine forests in south-west Pakistan during the ongoing heatwave.

The blazes in the Koh-i-Sulaiman mountains in Baluchistan province have already destroyed hundreds of hectares of forest, Farah Azeem Shah, a spokesman for the provincial government, said on Monday.

So far, three people have been killed and four others injured in the firefighting effort.

The cause of the forest fire that broke out last week was initially unclear.

However, it is assumed that the great heat could have favored the fire.

According to Shah, the authorities asked neighboring Iran for help in fighting the flames with aerial firefighting aircraft.

Similar fires have also been reported from the Margalla Hills near the capital, Islamabad.

"Climate change has hit Pakistan full force," said Malik Amin Aslam, a former climate change minister.

The high temperatures would also have favored drought and flooding after dam failures on glacial lakes.

The connection is underpinned by a new study: According to the current evaluation, heat waves like the recent one in India and Pakistan have become around 30 times more likely due to climate change.

Extreme heat every five years in the future?

This is the conclusion reached by almost 30 researchers from Great Britain, India, Pakistan and other countries who have come together in the World Weather Attribution Group.

So-called attribution research examines whether and to what extent extreme weather events can be attributed to global warming.

According to the study, which has not yet been reviewed by experts and was published on Monday evening, the probability of such a heat wave is currently – with global warming of around 1.2 degrees – still quite low: one has to reckon with a probability of 1 percent every year.

However, before the start of the industrial age, this probability was only a thirtieth of that.

With a global warming of two degrees, such an extreme heat wave must be expected about every five years, the researchers write.

To calculate the effect of climate change, the researchers compared today's weather data with that of the late 19th century.

German climate researcher Friederike Otto from Imperial College London, who worked on the impact, declared heatwaves to be the deadliest weather extremes ever.

“At the same time, it is these extremes that are increasing most in a warming world.

As long as greenhouse gas emissions continue, events like this will become an increasingly frequent catastrophe,” Otto said.

In India and Pakistan there have been at least 90 deaths in the context of the heat in the past few weeks.

March was the hottest in India since records began 122 years ago, and record temperatures were also measured in Pakistan.

The drought also exacerbated the situation: in both countries, there was a good 60 percent less rain than usual.

The main grain-growing regions in the Indus and Ganges plains were hit hardest, resulting in severe crop losses.

Since then, the heat has only increased: at the end of April and the beginning of May, temperatures rose to around 45 degrees Celsius.

South Asia is precariously at the forefront of the climate crisis, the World Bank recently wrote.

At 5.2 percent, Pakistan has one of the smallest forest areas in the world.

The country is responsible for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions, but is among the top ten countries most at risk from climate change.

ak/dpa

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-05-24

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